Seems like it's trendy to hate the NSA. It gets conflated with an anti-authoritarian mindset. I wish smart people would gain some perspective - I got some by reading Bamford's books and a new one by Fred Kaplan - Dark Territories, about NSAs painful move to cyber. Some key points:
* All the great powers have NSA equivalents. Meaning they play offence and defense in crypto, RF, and cyber. We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's. Our exploit-riddled networks are a playground for American, Russian and Chinese cyber warriors - and probably many others.
* In cyber, offense and defense become the same. Kaplan's book covers this. So a smart country seeks cyber-superiority. The more we hamper NSA, the more we empower foreign cyber-warriors.
* The focus has moved from RF to cyber. Giant antennas are far less important and giant datacenters are the new stars. Vacuuming up packets is less alarming when you understand we've been vacuuming up radio and telephone signals for decades. When comsats were important, NSA was vacuuming up their downlinks. When international telegrams were punched on paper tape, NSA's predecessors picked up the tape each day.
* The US has tried going "NSA-less". It happened in 1929 under the slogan "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". That noble slogan led to the US operating at a disadvantage in the lead up to WWII. It doesn't pay to fly blind.
This isn't meant as an attack on the OP, but I have a hard time taking anybody seriously who's using the word "cyber" in such an inflated way. Always reminds me of this:
I also think it's quite troublesome how this very real issue, IT security, is being misused to stage yet another "War on something" even if there isn't anything concrete to wage a war on. If there's such a thing as the MIC, it seems to have found a new business field with "cyber".
IT security works on cooperation, even more so on international cooperation. It does not work when international players are constantly trying to shaft each other over by collecting 0-days, like this is some kind of war which has to be won by pummeling the opposition into submission with "cyber weapons".
In that regard agencies like the NSA, and their foreign equivalents, are doing everybody a giant disservice by making the problem worse, not better.
We are already at a point where these government agencies tools are being sold to the highest private bidders: https://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2017/06/22/shadow-brokers-scy...
As a fan of dystopian cyberpunk fiction, I'm not sure if I should geek out over this or just be depressed.
More details pls. Because it sounds like bs.
It is a difference to secure a network and maybe find out who a attacker is - and then attack back - than to just hack everyone you can and build as much hidden botnets as possible. Which would be "offense"
"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail".
It is indeed a noble statemt. And I'd like to see claims, how that led to US disadvantage in WW2.
Because when you have Nazis e.g. they are clearly not gentlemans anymore and can (and were afaik) be spied on. The statement means, that you only spy on enemys.
"We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's"
You are the still the superpower number one. And for once you lead by example. And you do indeed(or try to) impose restrictions on everyone else all the time.
If you would really stop to spy on everybody in the world and really only on your enemys ... this alone would make a huge impact. But you as a empire does not really want to. The more you know about the worlds secrets, the more you can controll it. And no, I am not saying that the smaller empires like china or russia are any better (not at all). But you are the power number on. You have the choice of leading by fear, violence and intimidating - or by sticking to your old values of respecting your peoples and others freedom(as long as it is mutual) and providing a base for a voluntary coorporation of any kind. If you do this, you stay in leadership. If you just become one more lame empire, using any means necessary to stay in power, you will just fall like any of those empires, as history and current trend shows.
It's not the role of a democratic and free government to use mass surveillance against its own citizens. It's something you do in a tyranny to weed out dissidents and quill rebellions before they happen.
I'm sure you can put up a lot of good points as to why he NSAs of the world help, but the simple truth is, that we are not free when we live under a surveillance state.
> * All the great powers have NSA equivalents. Meaning they play offence and defense in crypto, RF, and cyber. We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's. Our exploit-riddled networks are a playground for American, Russian and Chinese cyber warriors - and probably many others.
So?
> * In cyber, offense and defense become the same. Kaplan's book covers this. So a smart country seeks cyber-superiority. The more we hamper NSA, the more we empower foreign cyber-warriors.
Does this hold even when your "offense" involves hoarding vulnerabilities (instead of responsibly disclosing them) and then leaking them?
> * The focus has moved from RF to cyber. Giant antennas are far less important and giant datacenters are the new stars. Vacuuming up packets is less alarming when you understand we've been vacuuming up radio and telephone signals for decades. When comsats were important, NSA was vacuuming up their downlinks. When international telegrams were punched on paper tape, NSA's predecessors picked up the tape each day.
I don't see how "we have been doing this for a long time" makes it less bad.
> * The US has tried going "NSA-less". It happened in 1929 under the slogan "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". That noble slogan led to the US operating at a disadvantage in the lead up to WWII. It doesn't pay to fly blind.
It really made me laugh, and think about the pointlessness of the whole organisation of British Intelligence.
Are we really clear that MI5/6, NSA, GCHQ etc have any benefit at all. Isn't it just a matter of of an arms race, where each country keeps raising the stakes? It is already clear that the NSA have produced dangerous cyber weapons which have escaped into the wild.
The secrecy is the perfect excuse for empire building. You can imagine they are filled with paranoid idiots who want every bit of information going, but never analyse it into anything useful.
RE WW2 it is not clear at all that the USA was at a disadvantage due to lack of intelligence. In the UK we love to celebrate our great code breaking efforts, whilst simultaneously the Germans were breaking ours...
> Seems like it's trendy to hate the NSA. It gets conflated with an anti-authoritarian mindset. I wish smart people would gain some perspective - I got some by reading Bamford's books and a new one by Fred Kaplan - Dark Territories, about NSAs painful move to cyber. Some key points:
> * All the great powers have NSA equivalents. Meaning they play offence and defense in crypto, RF, and cyber. We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's. Our exploit-riddled networks are a playground for American, Russian and Chinese cyber warriors - and probably many others.
> * In cyber, offense and defense become the same. Kaplan's book covers this. So a smart country seeks cyber-superiority. The more we hamper NSA, the more we empower foreign cyber-warriors.
Reducing domestic surveillance doesn't substantially impact that mission.
Your argument is in the same vein as why us has the largest military force. I don't think it's irrational, but I would say it does not address the new security threats.
> I wish smart people would gain some perspective - I got some by reading Bamford's books and a new one by Fred Kaplan - Dark Territories, about NSAs painful move to cyber.
All smart people, or those that disagree with your findings from reading two books?
The NSA might have more credibility if there were some basic policy discussions about its purpose after the Cold War ended and indefinite wars on terror/drugs began.
Yes, that tends to happen when the NSA abuses its power to illegally spy on its own citizens for its own gain and profit, and also when it tends to compromise security of networks in 99% of the cases for its own surveillance benefits.
You seem to accept "the ends justify the means" on such a deep level. Have you considered that human history on earth is quite brief - and that our level of experience and confidence in our methods are mismatched? Another question would be: why do you have confidence in authorities while their objectives, desires, names, and alliances are opaque?
Given the current climate, with a foreign actor attempting to subvert our democracy, I'm more inclined to support other more obvious victims of NSA spying than Wikimedia.
This seems loosely held together - that said I do trust that our justice system will investigate it properly.
Given the climate, my feeling is anyone attempting to say our justice system is awful, or that the NSA doesn't provide any security, are witting or unwitting supporters of a foreign adversary. Unless, of course, Russia succeeds; then it's all kosher and the history books will be written as such.
If you think our justice system is terrible then please point to a country that does it better. Note I'm not talking about laws- rather, the judiciary itself.
Yes, a picture is taken of every piece of mail sent, tracking the "metadata." Additionally, the Church committee found around 10,000 pieces of mail a year were opened and photographed by the FBI without postal service knowledge.
Thinking about it, it was in about 1971 that US left the gold standard, and that was partly due to government spending. Watergate came not long afterwards. This design of the economic system where the government prints money still exists today.
What do people have to hide with any 'public' metadata?
This argument you're using with Wikipedia is basically the same one US government is making that this metadata information is public so they should be free to vacuum all of it up, including Americans. Even though we would never allow the police, or basically anyone else, to tap this at will and this information only exists in private pipes that must be tapped.
The leaked documents have shown a lot of this metadata included data that was included in unsecured HTTP POST headers, such as the multitude of mobile apps that broadcast user information over clear text, such as the various examples in PowerPoint screens shots of real 'metadata' that showed GPS coordinates being pinged back to servers via HTTP along with email addresses.
We can pretend all we want that this is public data because these sites are access publicly but any basic level of analysis into what 'metadata' contains it's quite obvious this doesn't hold up. Especially considering it includes individual interactions with web servers with private data.
You may not care about your private interactions with Wikipedia being scanned and stored in databases forever, but it's hardly just Wikipedia and I'm happy that Wikimedia is standing up against this stuff for all people.
It's not too much to ask to hold security services to the same privacy standards we've held all government agencies for two centuries.
As a regular donor, I'd like to address your concerns.
I gave them the donations. They are gifts. They can spend them on hookers and blow, I don't care. I donate because I appreciate their service. I appreciate it enough to where I'd kinda like them to be making mad loot.
I will continue to donate. I don't give gifts with strings. Gifts with strings are payments. My donation was a gift. Hell, I don't even write it off.
This case is not specific to Wikipedia, it questions the legality of all NSA Upstream surveillance.
It's time to get rid of these wire taps. The past year has repeatedly shown US intelligence agencies are not as secure as they imagined - some of these taps are no doubt being leveraged by the Kremlin, China, and other sophisticated enemies of freedom.
The mere threat of being surveilled already does a ton of damage to readers and editors. (although Wikipedia was in one of the NSA's leaked slides as a target [0]) It has a chilling effect [1] on users. A study even found that traffic to terrorism-related articles plunged after the Snowden leaks. [2] You might ask why this is a problem. The populace needs to be adequately informed about the facts about terrorism in order to deal with them rationally rather than stay perpetually afraid and let the government pass things like the Patriot Act that erodes their civil liberties. [3] (you hear the joke a lot that "this probably put me on a list", which is a pretty shocking demonstration of how normalized we've become to surveillance and being treated as bad guys for merely mentioning or looking at sensitive topics) Additionally, while non-registered editor locations are public (attached to a geolocatable IP address), those of registered users are not and I don't think any reader wants what they look at shared with other parties. While the specific case is against upstream surveillance by the NSA, I think the general idea is for Wikimedia to put their foot down against the encroachment of three-letter agencies on our domestic freedoms.
[+] [-] asher|8 years ago|reply
* All the great powers have NSA equivalents. Meaning they play offence and defense in crypto, RF, and cyber. We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's. Our exploit-riddled networks are a playground for American, Russian and Chinese cyber warriors - and probably many others.
* In cyber, offense and defense become the same. Kaplan's book covers this. So a smart country seeks cyber-superiority. The more we hamper NSA, the more we empower foreign cyber-warriors.
* The focus has moved from RF to cyber. Giant antennas are far less important and giant datacenters are the new stars. Vacuuming up packets is less alarming when you understand we've been vacuuming up radio and telephone signals for decades. When comsats were important, NSA was vacuuming up their downlinks. When international telegrams were punched on paper tape, NSA's predecessors picked up the tape each day.
* The US has tried going "NSA-less". It happened in 1929 under the slogan "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". That noble slogan led to the US operating at a disadvantage in the lead up to WWII. It doesn't pay to fly blind.
* Fear of an overreaching state is always justified; however we should focus that fear more on how NSA shares data than how it acquires it. For instance fusion centers: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centers-mat...
[+] [-] freeflight|8 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/sehnaoui/status/643972826802688000
I also think it's quite troublesome how this very real issue, IT security, is being misused to stage yet another "War on something" even if there isn't anything concrete to wage a war on. If there's such a thing as the MIC, it seems to have found a new business field with "cyber". IT security works on cooperation, even more so on international cooperation. It does not work when international players are constantly trying to shaft each other over by collecting 0-days, like this is some kind of war which has to be won by pummeling the opposition into submission with "cyber weapons".
In that regard agencies like the NSA, and their foreign equivalents, are doing everybody a giant disservice by making the problem worse, not better. We are already at a point where these government agencies tools are being sold to the highest private bidders: https://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2017/06/22/shadow-brokers-scy...
As a fan of dystopian cyberpunk fiction, I'm not sure if I should geek out over this or just be depressed.
[+] [-] hutzlibu|8 years ago|reply
More details pls. Because it sounds like bs. It is a difference to secure a network and maybe find out who a attacker is - and then attack back - than to just hack everyone you can and build as much hidden botnets as possible. Which would be "offense"
"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail".
It is indeed a noble statemt. And I'd like to see claims, how that led to US disadvantage in WW2. Because when you have Nazis e.g. they are clearly not gentlemans anymore and can (and were afaik) be spied on. The statement means, that you only spy on enemys.
"We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's"
You are the still the superpower number one. And for once you lead by example. And you do indeed(or try to) impose restrictions on everyone else all the time.
If you would really stop to spy on everybody in the world and really only on your enemys ... this alone would make a huge impact. But you as a empire does not really want to. The more you know about the worlds secrets, the more you can controll it. And no, I am not saying that the smaller empires like china or russia are any better (not at all). But you are the power number on. You have the choice of leading by fear, violence and intimidating - or by sticking to your old values of respecting your peoples and others freedom(as long as it is mutual) and providing a base for a voluntary coorporation of any kind. If you do this, you stay in leadership. If you just become one more lame empire, using any means necessary to stay in power, you will just fall like any of those empires, as history and current trend shows.
[+] [-] eksemplar|8 years ago|reply
I'm sure you can put up a lot of good points as to why he NSAs of the world help, but the simple truth is, that we are not free when we live under a surveillance state.
[+] [-] sametmax|8 years ago|reply
That makes no sense.
We all want peace. We all know that peace is not there yet and that without weapons the other countries would take advantage of it.
Yet we all know that the weapon oriented society the US has become is a major issue.
It's not contradictory, just being honest with yourself.
[+] [-] benchaney|8 years ago|reply
So?
> * In cyber, offense and defense become the same. Kaplan's book covers this. So a smart country seeks cyber-superiority. The more we hamper NSA, the more we empower foreign cyber-warriors.
Does this hold even when your "offense" involves hoarding vulnerabilities (instead of responsibly disclosing them) and then leaking them?
> * The focus has moved from RF to cyber. Giant antennas are far less important and giant datacenters are the new stars. Vacuuming up packets is less alarming when you understand we've been vacuuming up radio and telephone signals for decades. When comsats were important, NSA was vacuuming up their downlinks. When international telegrams were punched on paper tape, NSA's predecessors picked up the tape each day.
I don't see how "we have been doing this for a long time" makes it less bad.
> * The US has tried going "NSA-less". It happened in 1929 under the slogan "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". That noble slogan led to the US operating at a disadvantage in the lead up to WWII. It doesn't pay to fly blind.
The US did pretty ok in WWII.
> * Fear of an overreaching state is always justified; however we should focus that fear more on how NSA shares data than how it acquires it. For instance fusion centers: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centers-mat....
Those things are both issues, and we can discuss them both.
[+] [-] jimnotgym|8 years ago|reply
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...
It really made me laugh, and think about the pointlessness of the whole organisation of British Intelligence.
Are we really clear that MI5/6, NSA, GCHQ etc have any benefit at all. Isn't it just a matter of of an arms race, where each country keeps raising the stakes? It is already clear that the NSA have produced dangerous cyber weapons which have escaped into the wild.
The secrecy is the perfect excuse for empire building. You can imagine they are filled with paranoid idiots who want every bit of information going, but never analyse it into anything useful.
RE WW2 it is not clear at all that the USA was at a disadvantage due to lack of intelligence. In the UK we love to celebrate our great code breaking efforts, whilst simultaneously the Germans were breaking ours...
[+] [-] skrebbel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fweespeech|8 years ago|reply
> * All the great powers have NSA equivalents. Meaning they play offence and defense in crypto, RF, and cyber. We (USA) can impose restrictions on our NSA but not on anyone else's. Our exploit-riddled networks are a playground for American, Russian and Chinese cyber warriors - and probably many others.
> * In cyber, offense and defense become the same. Kaplan's book covers this. So a smart country seeks cyber-superiority. The more we hamper NSA, the more we empower foreign cyber-warriors.
Reducing domestic surveillance doesn't substantially impact that mission.
> * Fear of an overreaching state is always justified; however we should focus that fear more on how NSA shares data than how it acquires it. For instance fusion centers: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centers-mat....
The CIA/NSA can't hold onto its intelligence as shown by various security breaches, whistleblowers, etc.
Not gathering domestic surveillance data in the first place avoids that problem. The NSA can keep an eye on China, Russia, etc. all they want.
[+] [-] justicezyx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] type0|8 years ago|reply
Please, you Sir,
no one knows what the heck you're talking about
[+] [-] 1001101|8 years ago|reply
All smart people, or those that disagree with your findings from reading two books?
[+] [-] someguydave|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morsch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
Yes, that tends to happen when the NSA abuses its power to illegally spy on its own citizens for its own gain and profit, and also when it tends to compromise security of networks in 99% of the cases for its own surveillance benefits.
[+] [-] pokemongoaway|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 43224gg252|8 years ago|reply
Because they make us LESS SECURE.
They are an anti-security organization.
[+] [-] dmurawsky|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Markoff|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unityByFreedom|8 years ago|reply
This seems loosely held together - that said I do trust that our justice system will investigate it properly.
Given the climate, my feeling is anyone attempting to say our justice system is awful, or that the NSA doesn't provide any security, are witting or unwitting supporters of a foreign adversary. Unless, of course, Russia succeeds; then it's all kosher and the history books will be written as such.
If you think our justice system is terrible then please point to a country that does it better. Note I'm not talking about laws- rather, the judiciary itself.
[+] [-] jokoon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzo38computer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Markoff|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dmix|8 years ago|reply
This argument you're using with Wikipedia is basically the same one US government is making that this metadata information is public so they should be free to vacuum all of it up, including Americans. Even though we would never allow the police, or basically anyone else, to tap this at will and this information only exists in private pipes that must be tapped.
The leaked documents have shown a lot of this metadata included data that was included in unsecured HTTP POST headers, such as the multitude of mobile apps that broadcast user information over clear text, such as the various examples in PowerPoint screens shots of real 'metadata' that showed GPS coordinates being pinged back to servers via HTTP along with email addresses.
We can pretend all we want that this is public data because these sites are access publicly but any basic level of analysis into what 'metadata' contains it's quite obvious this doesn't hold up. Especially considering it includes individual interactions with web servers with private data.
You may not care about your private interactions with Wikipedia being scanned and stored in databases forever, but it's hardly just Wikipedia and I'm happy that Wikimedia is standing up against this stuff for all people.
It's not too much to ask to hold security services to the same privacy standards we've held all government agencies for two centuries.
[+] [-] KGIII|8 years ago|reply
I gave them the donations. They are gifts. They can spend them on hookers and blow, I don't care. I donate because I appreciate their service. I appreciate it enough to where I'd kinda like them to be making mad loot.
I will continue to donate. I don't give gifts with strings. Gifts with strings are payments. My donation was a gift. Hell, I don't even write it off.
[+] [-] losteric|8 years ago|reply
It's time to get rid of these wire taps. The past year has repeatedly shown US intelligence agencies are not as secure as they imagined - some of these taps are no doubt being leveraged by the Kremlin, China, and other sophisticated enemies of freedom.
[+] [-] schoen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cooper12|8 years ago|reply
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wi... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect [2]: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-wikipedia-usage-idUSKCN0XO... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act