N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power | Hacker News Reader

N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power

nytimes.com

87 pointsr0h1n28 comments

It really saddens me that so much resources are devoted to destroying the world's security. It stands to reason that all of their research efforts will inevitably be leaked out to the general populace, and at that point we will be in a World of Shit.

It will be like antibiotics suddenly becoming useless, but instead encryption suddenly becoming useless.

It's not about spying anymore, it's about manipulating the world to meet your needs. And it's getting easier for them to do their job and harder for us to keep our freedom -- the surveillance-industrial complex is gaining momentum because it's the new "air superiority."

The cost is so fantastically low that it's foolish for military institutions -- be it sovereign or otherwise -- it's foolish for them to not invest in their own surveillance infrastructure.

If there's anything the world's governments can agree on with regards to ubiquitous gigabit fibre, it's one thing: surveillance will definitely be easier and cheaper.

If things stay as they are, things will be easier and cheaper. But things never stay the same, and even for their needs, crypto won't suddenly become useless (maybe the kind that relies on central parties, but people who take this stuff seriously probably don't rely on the "we promise we wont look at your key generation" in their threat models, and look, even AFRICOM uses Chinese satellites[0] which I'm sure numerous of SIGINT folks had to give their ok for, right?).

And there are things on the horizon like meshnets[1] that should prove to bring more challenges for governments (and private contractors/companies) that seek to tap backbones, DIY cellphones[2] that bypass coercive governments who sweet talk org/corps, and cheap drones that can be controlled by gestures of potential targets at the disposal of the masses[3] that enable crowd-sourced data collection and attack vectors previously not available to the common man.

Also, impromptu DoD initiatives[4], don't make me think things are as asymmetric as most people may think.

[0] http://blog.heritage.org/2013/05/07/american-military-commun...

[1] http://forum.chimeshnet.com/

[2] http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=2182

[3] http://startupdestiny.com/2013/11/19/why-i-hacked-an-ar-dron...

[4] http://www.zyn.com/sbir/sbres/sbir/dod/darpa/darpasb133-002....

This part jumped out at me:

>In other countries, the document said, the N.S.A. must also "counter indigenous cryptographic programs by targeting their industrial bases with all available Sigint and Humint"

The phrase indigenous cryptographic programs brings up the interesting possibility that other countries use different encryption algorithms, and standards that are (apparently) rather difficult for the NSA to crack. Anyone know what they may be alluding to here?

P.S. It goes without saying, but the current (and previous) administration was absolutely wrong to sanction these wanton violations of our rights. It would be wrong even if it were effective at combating threats, but it isn't. The fact that the NSA wants even more of this kind of information is proof that the value of self-restraint is missing. Good people - particularly intelligent, well-intentioned political dissidents - are going to be stifled by these intrusions, and the health of our democracy depends on allowing the free expression of that dissent without fear of reprisal.

Media reports relying on materials that Snowden leaked should credit him by name within the first two paragraphs, and he should get credits against potential U.S. jail time for every article of this kind published to mass media. I don't like that millions are reading headlines and going, "holy cow whoa geez" and lining up their political thinking accordingly, without ever knowing that Snowden, completely locked out of the U.S. or any western country at this point is the one who provided the information in question.

I agree with you, but Snowden doesn't. He's frequently asked the journalists who have communicated with him to downplay his name in the story, because he believes the story is so much more important than his involvement.

I don't know how to combine that desire for the story to take the lead and for him to get credit with the American people he deserves (and get the public sentiment so firmly on his side that the powers that be have to pardon him, or face a vengeful public).

I also don't know how to inform Americans about how many of our politicians endorse all of these illegal actions (and the legal ones that aren't ethical). Every one in America should be furious at Obama, Pelosi (so much rage at Pelosi is warranted), Feinstein, Lindsey Graham, etc. But, they aren't. Even people who think the Snowden and Manning leaks were a good and necessary thing aren't connecting the dots that Obama is where the buck stops.

And, those very few senators and members of the house who've had the guts to support Snowden and Manning should be getting a whole lot of praise. Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul (who I'm loathe to say nice things about) deserve respect for standing up on this one.

The way to credit Snowden is to get things to change, ideally so that he can come home.

The way to get things to change is to clearly, calmly, quietly, and confidently educate all the people you know on what the government has done and why this runs so contrary to the American spirit. You don't need to bluster or make emotional pleas. You do need to come down firmly on the side you believe is right, and educate the folks around you.

I had a discussion about Snowden recently with a number of friends and acquaintances of mine. I had offhandedly mentioned his name as a leader in a discussion on the nature of leadership, and someone vociferously objected to my terming him as such, even playing the "traitor" card. I didn't have to respond to him, however, because about 5-6 of my friends chimed in, explaining the facts about what the government had done and why this meant that it was the NSA in the wrong here and not Snowden. And then several bystanders who previously knew nothing about Snowden said that even without knowing all the facts of the case, they were much more swayed by the Snowden supporters because we presented reasoned, sourced debate rather than impassioned name-calling. These were not techies - they were well-educated, generally professional 20- and 30-somethings.

The story does credit Snowden later on. Are you saying he should be credited in the first 2 paragraphs because people usually stop reading stories after that?

FTFA:

> The agency also said it would try to decrypt or bypass codes that keep communications secret by influencing “the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships,” ...

> The agency plans to fight back against the rise of encryption through relationships with companies that develop encryption tools and through espionage operations.

Does that sound like "backdoor Symantec PGP WDE, Microsoft Bitlocker, etc." to anyone else?

Certainly any encryption system which cannot at least be publicly audited should not be trusted.

Absolutely.

I don't use TrueCrypt but I was happy to contribute to the recent fundraiser to audit it. I'd also like to see audits of other (crypto-related) projects such as dm-crypt/LUKS, GnuPG, OpenSSL, GnuTLS, etc (and would happily contribute to those as well!).

> relationships with companies that develop encryption tools

That indeed sounds scary.

It's also very likely to be just a continuation of current practice.

Indeed, and that makes it even scarier.

Laura Poitras, the story's co-author, together with Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, is part of the 'troika' that broke open this can of worms. In case you still haven't read NYT Mag's fascinating profile of hers, please do: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno...

It is very clearly laying out what they think - and in black and white text - the LAWS are what is broken - not the screwed-up snooping at any cost motto of the NSA - so the LAW (U.S Constitution and state and federal statutes) should be modified.

"We have the power to snoop on anybody at anytime and by god we will go to any lengths to protect and increase this illegal power." The fact that Terrorism is not even tangentially invoked is the true tragedy of this situation. All the current laws vastly increasing the intrusive surveillance were passed post 9/11 to specifically stop terrorism.

"American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A."

= Interesting choice of words?

It is a paraphrasing by the article's authors. It is their take on the document.

Fortunately the article includes a link to a copy of the document. Published on documentcloud with a crappy user-interface it is a PITA to read it and I can't find a link to download as a PDF either. But at least you still have the option to read the original source yourself.

It's actually a 'summation'. The context is far stronger than a simple re-wording (or paraphrase in the ordinary sense). I agree it begs for a deeper review of the original source. The lead in reads: Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/summation

Viewing it on DocumentCloud provides a link to the PDF https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/8383...

How did you get from the NYT inline widget to the PDF file? I didn't see any links from the NYT page to documentcloud itself -- the only reason I even knew it was documentcloud was because I had to whitelist it in RequestPolicy.

No idea what "RequestPolicy" is but the widget has DocumentCloud's name/logo (which links to their homepage), searching DocumentCloud for the title of the document SIGINT strategy[1] yields this as the first result and when you view it on DocumentCloud[2] (as opposed to the widget) it includes a link to the PDF.

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/public/search/SIGINT%20strateg...

[2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/838324-2012-2016-sig...

I think anyone who still believes the mass surveillance isn't used over 95 percent of the time for different reasons than "defending against terrorism", is being naive at this point.

This is mainly about industrial espionage, and maintaining the power over the world (by any means necessary), primarily for the NSA, then for the US government, and then for their partners in the military industrial complex.

They know that mass surveillance is a treasure trove for all kinds of scenarios, present, and future, against anyone who might ever question US's wishes - ever. They just can't imagine giving that up.

For me to trust the US government or to truly trust any US company again, these things would need to happen first, for US to re-establish its credibility in the world as a beacon of democracy and freedoms, that they've been pretending to uphold for a long time:

- pass Rush Holt's Surveillance State Repeal Act passes, to dump the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act altogether (as a first step)

H.R 2818: http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th/house-bill/2818

- cut NSA's budgets (both secret and public) to 10-20 percent of what they are now, because if they aren't, then simply repealing the laws won't change much

- throw out the secret FISA Court, or make it dramatically more transparent, and like a real Court

- overhaul the Senate Intelligence Committee (get rid of people like Feinstein and Rogers)

- fire (or even imprison) Clapper, Alexander and Holder, and possibly even impeach Obama (to really send a message to future presidents that mass surveillance is completely unacceptable)

- make it explicitly clear that any private communication of any citizen in US or on US territory needs a regular warrant (one that actually respects the 4th Amendment). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the US Constitution applied to people on US soil and not just "US citizens". Couldn't that be interpreted to defend the data on US soil, too? If I buy a home in US, isn't it defended by US laws? Why can't my data be, too?

For non-US citizens, there also needs to be an international treaty that says that if a country wants another country's citizen's data, then it needs to contact his/her local government, before it can obtain.

I think it's only reasonable. Just because my data happens to travel through US backbones, doesn't mean the US government has power to willy-nilly get my data as they want, and also force US companies to give it to them, breaching the privacy that US company promised me when I signed-up with them.

Something like this is only possible right now, because like with all rights, people haven't fought against it yet. There's no reason why such a treaty couldn't exist. For the Internet to become a nice, non-hostile environment again (talking about governments abusing their power here), we need to make it encrypted and secure by default, but we also need the legal framework to support that, and severely limit and punish government abuses.

I have a question. What can people do to stop this?

I've seen numerous protests, a lot of uproar in the press, grassroot initiatives. But did any of this change anything?

I mean, hell, even the great 2008 election for change didn't change much. What are the options left?

Stop paying them.

"I mean, hell, even the great 2008 election for change didn't change much. What are the options left?"

How about not voting for the people who do these things? Like this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_obama

Or this lady:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Feinstein

Or any of these people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._King

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Schumer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boehner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Pelosi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nelson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxby_Chambliss

Don't be a coward and vote for the lesser of two evils. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Vote third party until the major parties get their act together; that sends them a message, loud and clear, that you are not too lazy to vote and that they are failing to do the things that would be needed to get your support.

> How about not voting for the people who do these things? Like this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_obama

Pretty sure nobody will be voting for him since he won't be running in any more elections...

Seriously though in regards to some of the other names you mentioned is there really any difference by voting for whoever is running against them? Many people (myself included) though Obama was different - that obviously turned out to be completely wrong...so how are we supposed to know who won't do these things?

The problem is not knowing who won't do these things. The problem is that nobody gets punished, and the solution is what I said at the bottom of my post: vote third party. Deprive the major parties of votes, and do so in a way that clearly indicates why you did not vote for them.

> Seriously though in regards to some of the other names you mentioned is there really any difference by voting for whoever is running against them? Many people (myself included) though Obama was different - that obviously turned out to be completely wrong...so how are we supposed to know who won't do these things?

To me, this idea should encourage more people to vote outside the major parties. If you voted democrat to avoid the consequences of a republican victory, only to find that the results were largely the same anyway, it's no longer a "wasted" vote to vote third party.

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