Thanks to Snowden (who keeps on giving, even 5 years more or less to the day after his escape to Hong Kong), we can assume that Japan too conducts dragnet surveillance. It is the state of current affairs that it hardly raises more than a yawn.
Still an interesting article, since it reveals that the Japanese take their secrecy really, really seriously, and so we may not assume much of what they are up to, really.
The problem with secret government agencies is otherwise generally that they are notoriously difficult to reign in. They are governed by law, but are likely to develop their own agendas, and since lawmakers are kept in the dark they can end up meddling in policy, using all the means at their disposal.
Our ultimate line of defense against such, and only hope are the brave whistleblowers. Edward Snowden needs to be pardoned.
> Still an interesting article, since it reveals that the Japanese take their secrecy really, really seriously, and so we may not assume much of what they are up to, really.
Pretty much all SIGINT agencies do. Maybe 1 in 20 Canadians even knows that CSE exists or what it does. It keeps a pretty low profile, within the limitations that it can, considering that the gross figures for its budget are public and other public info available from outside of classification.
(For the Americans: CSE is the exact equivalent of the NSA, it's been around for a long time and is one of the five eyes partners).
Are they governed by law? I'm starting to feel that no one follows the law, or spirit of it at least, unless they have to or can write the laws themselves.
Corporations write their own laws through lobbyists and circumvent it when they can. Top secret agents don't really have anyone they are accountable to since they're so top secrete there isn't any public oversight.
For some reason the secret courts convened to check them (FISA) are just rubber stamp mills too because hey, those don't really have any oversight either.
It really doesn't seem like this stuff will get any better without a ton more oversight. It'll be interesting to see if the Japanese people are more appalled by this and more willing to stand up.
> It is the state of current affairs that it hardly raises more than a yawn.
Do you mean here (roughly US, given posting time and time zones), internationally or domestically?
Certainly, internationally, I would think it should not be a great revelation. We all know / should have known, long before Snowden, that all countries with a decent GDP are doing international spying. Those with a poor GDP still spend great sums to do domestic spying. I don't think the [non]-novelty of it is a fair criticism.
Because, like you say, it is an interesting article. Kudos to The Intercept for a good piece. They could have taken a trivial approach but they didn't.
My criticism is, I wonder how the Japanese feel about it. It's too bad The Intercept didn't gauge that for us. Certainly the Japanese have a different standard for privacy than we (US) do, and different consideration of government.
What’s horrifying is that it seems there’s little anyone can do about anything being disclosed by whistleblowers. Things go on business as usual. I wonder if this will ever make it to the Japanese mainstream media or if the state tv kills this fast.
Clearly they value secrecy over efficient cooperation of the branches, and I'm not sure this is particularly bad for their net contribution to society.
>In 2012, the country’s police investigators were repeatedly thwarted by a hacker known as the “Demon Killer,” who posted a series of death threats online. The hacker used Tor to successfully evade detection for seven months, which was a major source of embarrassment for Japanese police — and likely fueled demand for new surveillance capabilities.
yes.. it was a bad bad hacker who fueled demand for more money thrown at the defense industry and not someone acting on purpose.
It is most unlikely that the Demon Killer was a false flag funding exercise. Imagine the problems if a whistleblower exposed that!
It is much more likely that the Military-Industrial Complex used the opportunity to push for more powers and funding. As all Military-Industrial Complexes do all around the world at every opportunity.
It seems pretty plausible to me that a bad bad hacker could do such things and a reaction from the Japanese government would be to try to break Tor. Do you think it's a lie? If Tor doesn't actually help hackers against the Japanese, then what is their motivation for lying? Do you think the Japanese government just want an excuse to spy on their people? (genuinely asking)
The Intercept is the most impressive free press initiative of the last 50 years. We thought that the Internet would democratize the free flow of information, that we could be free of a handful media conglomerates and what we got was Facebook.
Snowden whistle blower greatest consequence was the initiative to create The Intercept.
I would hold the intercept in higher regard had they not outed reality winner as a source. given the nature of the work they do, one would think they'd be better at that sort of thing.
I have such mixed feelings about The Intercept. They break extremely important news but mix in too many opinionated blog posts.
Read some of their articles about animal cruelty. The topics and information are great but the writing is littered with opinion and assumption instead of objective journalism.
I couldn't even take two podcast episodes before I stopped listening. They had skits mocking Trump. That's not journalism. That just makes people who like Trump shut down and call your site fake news. Stick to the facts and leave the BS to the bloggers.
Clearly they can keep things secret unlike NSA and co. Whole article is random guesses, names of building and not much of anything else, that is kind of impressive. In fact the only real stuff is from a power point shared with NSA..
Looking at source materials, it is not hard to see what they are doing. They have radome’s to obfuscate where their dishes are pointed, and use them to collect signals that pass through the Chinese and other satellites they can see.
They appear to request processing assistance from NSA, so the most educated guess would be that they know the right satellites to collect from, but are not quite there yet in terms of normalizing and analyzing most of the data.
You can scroll to the bottom of linked article to view the source documents.
> No internal documents from Japan’s surveillance agency have ever been publicly disclosed before.
It makes me kinda sad that somewhere in a nondescript office building someone has to wipe the "No documents leaked since 67 years" counter off some whiteboard.
When you have a long-established culture of unaccountable organizations with nearly unlimited budgets and nothing else to do, you eventually will get something like Section 9.
Not a chance. I worked at an intelligence agency for nearly a decade and it was impossible to get people to follow the rules of "keep the blinds closed".
I have basically always assumed that all governments are conducting the maximum amount of espionage on their citizens and adversaries as they are able to within the constraints of their technology and budget.
[+] [-] stareatgoats|7 years ago|reply
Still an interesting article, since it reveals that the Japanese take their secrecy really, really seriously, and so we may not assume much of what they are up to, really.
The problem with secret government agencies is otherwise generally that they are notoriously difficult to reign in. They are governed by law, but are likely to develop their own agendas, and since lawmakers are kept in the dark they can end up meddling in policy, using all the means at their disposal.
Our ultimate line of defense against such, and only hope are the brave whistleblowers. Edward Snowden needs to be pardoned.
[+] [-] walrus01|7 years ago|reply
Pretty much all SIGINT agencies do. Maybe 1 in 20 Canadians even knows that CSE exists or what it does. It keeps a pretty low profile, within the limitations that it can, considering that the gross figures for its budget are public and other public info available from outside of classification.
(For the Americans: CSE is the exact equivalent of the NSA, it's been around for a long time and is one of the five eyes partners).
[+] [-] marricks|7 years ago|reply
Corporations write their own laws through lobbyists and circumvent it when they can. Top secret agents don't really have anyone they are accountable to since they're so top secrete there isn't any public oversight.
For some reason the secret courts convened to check them (FISA) are just rubber stamp mills too because hey, those don't really have any oversight either.
It really doesn't seem like this stuff will get any better without a ton more oversight. It'll be interesting to see if the Japanese people are more appalled by this and more willing to stand up.
[+] [-] jiveturkey|7 years ago|reply
Do you mean here (roughly US, given posting time and time zones), internationally or domestically?
Certainly, internationally, I would think it should not be a great revelation. We all know / should have known, long before Snowden, that all countries with a decent GDP are doing international spying. Those with a poor GDP still spend great sums to do domestic spying. I don't think the [non]-novelty of it is a fair criticism.
Because, like you say, it is an interesting article. Kudos to The Intercept for a good piece. They could have taken a trivial approach but they didn't.
My criticism is, I wonder how the Japanese feel about it. It's too bad The Intercept didn't gauge that for us. Certainly the Japanese have a different standard for privacy than we (US) do, and different consideration of government.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mrhappyunhappy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SiempreViernes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auntienomen|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] leaveyou|7 years ago|reply
yes.. it was a bad bad hacker who fueled demand for more money thrown at the defense industry and not someone acting on purpose.
[+] [-] willvarfar|7 years ago|reply
It is much more likely that the Military-Industrial Complex used the opportunity to push for more powers and funding. As all Military-Industrial Complexes do all around the world at every opportunity.
[+] [-] Moodles|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdsa5325|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draw_down|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] neves|7 years ago|reply
Snowden whistle blower greatest consequence was the initiative to create The Intercept.
[+] [-] rdtsc|7 years ago|reply
They have a donation page if anyone is interested in helping https://theintercept.com/donate/
[+] [-] tribby|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] driverdan|7 years ago|reply
Read some of their articles about animal cruelty. The topics and information are great but the writing is littered with opinion and assumption instead of objective journalism.
I couldn't even take two podcast episodes before I stopped listening. They had skits mocking Trump. That's not journalism. That just makes people who like Trump shut down and call your site fake news. Stick to the facts and leave the BS to the bloggers.
[+] [-] tlear|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willstrafach|7 years ago|reply
They appear to request processing assistance from NSA, so the most educated guess would be that they know the right satellites to collect from, but are not quite there yet in terms of normalizing and analyzing most of the data.
You can scroll to the bottom of linked article to view the source documents.
[+] [-] blattimwind|7 years ago|reply
It makes me kinda sad that somewhere in a nondescript office building someone has to wipe the "No documents leaked since 67 years" counter off some whiteboard.
[+] [-] zipwitch|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tcfunk|7 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.858905,141.7240164,913m/data...
[+] [-] creo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icanhackit|7 years ago|reply
https://theintercept.com/feed/?lang=en
[+] [-] mrhappyunhappy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enqk|7 years ago|reply