Is there any evidence to suggest kompromat has ever been used to blackmail American tech executives to backdoor their products for NSA or other agency?
If there were any solid evidence, then the program would be unable to continue, because -in large part- the folks being blackmailed would have solid reason to distrust that the blackmailer would actually keep their secrets.
There is circumstantial evidence that the NSA is shady as shit. A few notable items:
1) The NSA coerced nearly every major and minor telco in the US to assist in their ongoing highly-illegal domestic wiretapping operations. (When this came to light, Congress retroactively immunized (from prosecution) those telcos that assisted the NSA in breaking the law.)
2) The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper knowingly lied by omission before Congress about the scope and nature of NSA's domestic wiretapping operations.
3) The NSA's lawyers lied under oath to the US Supreme Court about the NSA's various domestic wiretapping operations.
In a similar way, there's no solid evidence that TSA was a combination jobs program, massive money-making program for then-VP Dick Cheney's business buddies and their pretty-useless microwave-imaging device company, and internal contraband-and-warrant checkpoint-establishment program. But when you compare the organization's stated goals with what it actually achieves, and how it responds to criticism at the difference between the two, it's pretty clear that its stated aims are substantially different from its actual aims.
simoncion|2 years ago
There is circumstantial evidence that the NSA is shady as shit. A few notable items:
1) The NSA coerced nearly every major and minor telco in the US to assist in their ongoing highly-illegal domestic wiretapping operations. (When this came to light, Congress retroactively immunized (from prosecution) those telcos that assisted the NSA in breaking the law.)
2) The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper knowingly lied by omission before Congress about the scope and nature of NSA's domestic wiretapping operations.
3) The NSA's lawyers lied under oath to the US Supreme Court about the NSA's various domestic wiretapping operations.
In a similar way, there's no solid evidence that TSA was a combination jobs program, massive money-making program for then-VP Dick Cheney's business buddies and their pretty-useless microwave-imaging device company, and internal contraband-and-warrant checkpoint-establishment program. But when you compare the organization's stated goals with what it actually achieves, and how it responds to criticism at the difference between the two, it's pretty clear that its stated aims are substantially different from its actual aims.