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Comment by thegeomaster | Hacker News Reader

Living in an underdeveloped country like mine is fiddled with inconveniences, but at least the intelligence agencies are off our backs. The authorities' cybercrime awareness is abysmally low, and I remember seeing Serbia colored the "not-monitored-at-all" color on that Snowden-related surveillance map.

It is a little concerning to see things like this happen near me, but for now I am grateful for the lack of pressure on me personally. I would love if the pressure ended everywhere, though, but it seems like it will only escalate in the future.

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Could you please link to the map?

And how are you 100% sure that you aren't being watched by your ISP at least? :)

And while there might not be a mass surveillance system, in such countries, it might be easier to bribe an ISP or otherwise compromise them.

It's harder than you might think. It all depends on who and how high-profile you are. Serbia's got around 7 500 000 residents and it takes a serious company with a serious infrastructure to interconnect them all and provide them with Internet access. Of course, it's incomparably easier to do than with U.S. ISPs, but then again, in the U.S. there are more powerful instances with an interest in bribing the providers than here. After all, who knows? Maybe we're watched as much as others, but I like to think we're (for now, until they catch up) safe from some more tyrannic forms of surveillance.

I know nothing about Serbia, but what are personal bribes like? I know that in Central America and Africa, bribing telecom employees to do things is relatively straightforward.

It probably is "easy" in the US, too, but I'd imagine it'd cost a lot more as people seem to be rather concerned about being caught.

Well, if someone does not give a shit about their job, they will be easy to bribe. I don't know about people working in tech here, but bribing someone to get a job, or have something done "off the record" in the administration is considered normal, and often the only way to achieve something due to even courts and judges being corrupt. Corruption is actually one of our biggest problems, and new governments are focusing their campaigns on that a lot.

This is the map, the small grey area in the Balkans is Serbia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Boundless...

And of course I'm not sure. But foreign intelligence agencies have bigger budgets and better connections so they pose a far greater threat. It's more likely that a CA was compromised by the NSA than my ISP :) We aren't completely free of surveillance, but the impact isn't that big like elsewhere. For now, at least...

I am not blaming you, but by you commenting here, you make it ok for the NSA to target all Americans who replied to this thread and all Americans that replied to threads that these Americans replied to in the past and all Americans that replied to threads that these Americans replied to in the past (since the NSA use 3 degree of separation rule).

I don't get it, care to elaborate?

For example, if Person_1 from a country besides USA calls an American (Person_2), it makes it ok for the NSA to spy on everyone Person_2 calls (lets call them People_3), and everyone People_3 calls (People_4) and everyone People_4 calls... I assume they follow the same rules for internet traffic so they basically get all internet data even if they are technically not allowed to spy on Americans...

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/you-ma...

So you're saying that non-Americans should not comment on HN?

of course not but I was hoping someone would be able to contradict me

>how are you 100% sure that you aren't being watched by your ISP at least? :)

I'm in a similar position so I'll have a shot at this.

Local ISPs tend not to log detail (no business case) and they are legally prohibited from monitoring communication anyway. So the only viable scenario is give the ISP an IP and ask for account owner (IP vs Account is logged). Which they won't do without a warrant (image risk). That combined with the messed up court system means that nothing makes it through the red tape & hassle unless its something intense (child trafficking etc)

Thanks for the info! Where are you from?

South Africa

We are talking about Serbia, not the US.

I doubt he's talking about the US. The situation he's describing, if anything, sounds a lot like how things work over here.

I was talking about South Africa, which presumably also counts as an underdeveloped country.

As soon as they have the budget, they'll be watching you ;) For the meantime, dozens of foreign intelligence services are probably picking up the slack.

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