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Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

Presumably some of the people writing these firmwares are reading hacker news. I'm pretty sad that extremely competent software people are building these things for the government - just following orders so to speak.

They must know that it's wrong? Or do they buy the government arguments about the balance between privacy and security; maybe are they just young, talented and excited to be doing something "legally" that most people would be put in jail for?

What to do when governments become untrustworthy actors to such an extent?

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    Government and industry have betrayed the Internet, and us.
    
    By subverting the Internet at every level to make it a vast,
    multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has
    undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that
    build and manage our Internet infrastructure, the companies
    that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the
    companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them
    to be ethical Internet stewards.
    
    This is not the Internet the world needs, or the Internet
    its creators envisioned. We need to take it back.
    
    And by we, I mean the engineering community.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/take_back_the...

Spying is often seen as a necessary requirement to diplomatic stability. I have much more of a problem with blanket surveillance than this targeted spying to be honest.

Lots of these revalations are being published by a non-US security company. The US security companies have either missed these security issues, deliberately ignored them, or have been forced to keep them secret. In my opinion, the fact that there are still some non-US IT security companies is a good thing.

>Spying is often seen as a necessary requirement to diplomatic stability.

Also for having the upper hand in negotiations and forcing the lesser states and their politicians to do as you please...

Which is much more important than some BS need for "diplomatic stability" without any other major player like USSR around, except maybe with China.

If you're the 10,000-pound gorilla you don't get instabilized by the small 10 pound zoo animals...

> If you're the 10,000-pound gorilla you don't get instabilized by the small 10 pound zoo animals

That's not always true for either countries[1] or animals[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_British_coloni...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_pig

They didn't "de-stabilize" UK, they just re-gained their freedom (as much as they could, they're still tied with 100 different ways to their old masters).

It's not like some small nation came and took Wales from the UK -- which would be actual de-stabilizing.

There is a big difference between a 10 pound animal and lots of 100-400lb pigs on fire.

Megarians doused some pigs with combustible pitch, crude oil or resin, set them alight, and drove them towards the enemy's massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from the flaming, squealing pigs, often killing great numbers of their own soldiers by trampling them to death.

From of foreign policy standpoint it's often less about the entire country vs small groups of well-connected people with foreign interests. In the end most of what the US government does is easier to understand when you reolise and account for just how corrupt it is.

EX: US immigration policy seems vary reasonable when you reolise exploting both legal and illigal immigrants makes some people lot's of money.

> Also for having the upper hand in negotiations and forcing the lesser states and their politicians to do as you please

That's what "diplomatic stability" means.

I think the generous interpretation is that the US Security companies simply don't get as much collected data in the areas being targeted by the US intel agencies. I don't have any real data to back it up, but I would assume Kaspersky has a much higher install rate in Russia than, say, Symantec. I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true for much of the middle east, too.

Its especially interesting that the mere assumption that the US security companies are covering for the intel agencies is going to make it look more like they are. If Kaspersky is on 90% of the computers targeted by the NSA/CIA, they're going to be much more likely to get the data necessary for this kind of analysis, which reinforces the thought that the US companies might be covering it up.

Good point. I hadn't considered that.

For people who like embedded systems and RF and reverse engineering, you can't find a much better job opportunity than the secret spy agencies these days. Show me a company who has their engineers solve problems like these, there's very few, especially at the cutting edge like we're seeing come from NSA and GCHQ.

I'd love to work on problems like this, especially in a team of highly skilled coworkers. It'd be a lot of fun (and a lot of frustration, reverse engineering generally is). The part I wouldn't like is having to keep it secret from family and such.

Just because you think something is wrong means that other people "must know that it's wrong?" If anything, they have access to much more privileged information than we do. For all we know, they're fighting the First Wave of Gua infiltrators.

Because it's there, and money.

When were governments ever trustworthy actors in this respect?

> just following orders so to speak.

Maybe talented people have a different perspective than you? Maybe they recoginize the worldwide cyberwar and don't want to have their pants down when Russia and China do whatever they want? Or they realize that good intelligence has value, if not moral value, assuming good intel could stop or minimize future armed conflicts? This is like calling Turing a baby-killer because he worked for the UK intelligence. Turns out good intel is a lifesaver.

I think patriotism can play a significant role.

>I think patriotism can play a significant role.

That's a fair and likely true statement. However, imho, leaning on appeals to authority for one's moral compass tends to corrupt more reliably than individualism.

Iow, follow the patriotism of your heart, not what others tell you it means.

Maybe you do yourself believe that this type of work is justified. That's a defensible position: I'll disagree with you, but you made your own decision. Just don't do it for external accolades and validation.

>just following orders so to speak

I say we give them their just deserts - hang 'em high and let them be a message to any other collaborators that this sort of shit is not tolerated in a civilized society.

Because talented people don't care about politics, they care about achievements. They don't necessarily care about how their achievements are used. They just want something they can put their hands on and feel content when they make it work.

The most brilliant minds are often bored by the fact they can't find anything that challenge their skills. You give any problem to talent, talent won't care about the nature of it. Talent will be put to work.

And to be honest, maybe the work they do can be legitimate or might serve good in the end. It's just that you will never know about it, for the simple fact that it's classified.

For example, catching tax evasion or financial crimes is very hard. If you really want to catch those criminals (who have the worst effect on society), you might want to step up the spying game and scan everybody. Catching or discouraging terrorists is difficult too.

The issue is not that you scan everybody, the issue is that those spying tools can be used against inncocents or for the sake or private interests. So of course people will scream bloody murder, but if the NSA has a very well made policy to avoid misuse, and if you don't hear about any big scandal, maybe there's no big harm done.

All in all, civilization works in a hierarchy, and politics will lead people to do things. Moral standards are guidelines, they're not rules. Civilization works towards its perpetuation. I doubt those spying tools are used for private interests. I know freedom is important, but you can't escape the fact that information technologies can give new powers to criminals.

The question is, do you want civilization to be the norm, or would you prefer to have people taking advantage of civilization with the use of technology ? I know the US has a history of liberty, but when it comes to domestic telecommunications, I doubt any government will let people use gadget because it feels "free". You're not free when you use any device, any of those device requires telecom infrastructures, and thus it requires civilization.

In the light of dirty finance, I think I can be be okay with those spying program, because I really want those bad guys to be caught. On the other hand, citizens are both protected and housed by government, so I don't think kids can really complain about their parents peeking in their room.

Of course my cynicism doesn't excuse my arguments, but I like to understand the real reasons behind those programs, and children rarely realizes the real reasons the behavior of their parents.

Freedom in modern western countries requires a lot of regulation and very hard police work. Freedom has a very high cost.

I guess in the end you are saying you trust the motives of governments and I'm saying I don't. It's fine to argue that but lets hope neither of us end up on the wrong side of government in a legal case for example. The UK government has been breaking client attorney privilege with these tools.

The people who are meant to be serving our best interest are clearly often serving themselves.

>> I doubt those spying tools are used for private interests

It's proven from the Snowden papers and elsewhere that America uses it's spying power for industrial espionage.

A program with limitless powers such as this will lead to limitless abuses. I'm all for governments being able to individually monitor bad people but it seems to me the old mechanisms are still the most effective and that particularly mass surveillance, but also deep and difficult to detect hacks like this make me think that everything we believe about democracy is probably false and that we actually live in a kleptocracy.

I still think that we know very little about the people using these systems for the wrong reasons. I think government should be reporting them where abuse occurs; it would make me feel a lot safer about their use. If there are never any abuses reported you can be sure that they are many.

> It's proven from the Snowden papers and elsewhere that America uses it's spying power for industrial espionage.

I don't have a problem with that. It's totally expected from government to do industrial espionnage. It has nothing to do with privacy and liberties. I think any patriot would be happy to know his country is trying to spy on another country. It's expected, spying is a common denominator. In french I'd say "c'est de bonne guerre".

But they tell us they just love the free market and that is the solution to all problems - why is it acceptable to lie to people with a straight face. I say it's totally unacceptable to lie and cheat corporations who are working maybe working to make a better deal for their citizens rather than OPEC and that you have accepted it is not really my point to argue against.

Also this:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/spy-cables-world-espio...

And talented people will have to care about politics more and more as time goes on. It's vital that we get better more moral people into politics and everyone has a duty to act in accordance with their own morality. Maybe we can fix some of the problems around the world that cause most of the harm if more people stop being quiet about the bad things that governments are doing in their name.

Sure. As long as absolutists like you are willing to accept that maybe "moral" doesn't necessarily mean to other people something you are going to personally agree with.

> They must know that it's wrong?

But it's not wrong. It's honourable work when done on behalf of one's nation.

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