"At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US. This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores."
I think he meant that the NSA had access to the 80% of calls that are routed through the US, not the the NSA is recording and storing literally every single one of them. I think he was misquoted or misspoke.
William Binney hasn't worked for the NSA since 2001. Were they recording all calls back then? Did someone still there leak new information to him?
The NSA is recording every call in the Bahamas and Afghanistan. They can listen to any call made in the last 30 days. (Edit: Only cell phone calls, but still.) It's possible that a similar rolling-window system is in place for calls going through the USA.
Very probably yes. GCHQ's retention goes back (very broadly) that far (it's inconsistent) - and they have some access to each other's networks (the NSA access GCHQ's network via example.gchq.nsa.ic.gov, specifically, so for example https://wiki.gchq.nsa.ic.gov/index.php would get you to GCHQ's internal MediaWiki if you're on the NSA network - GCHQ use an internal .gchq TLD). They can query selectors on each other's databases, and filtering of what's "not allowed" seems to be very often up to the analyst. (Of course, I don't know if they share everything. Probably not.)
The NSA's own BLARNEY initiative for this stuff dates back to 1978, although I think GCHQ beat them to the punch in effective mass telephony intercept - the first one I'm aware of started in the early 1980s, although that is offline, and probably no longer archived as the media (digital tape with low-bitrate encoded audio) would probably have degraded beyond all usefulness by now (and it sounded pretty crunchy in the first place, I understand, kinda like a bad squelchy lower-side-band transmission!).
Remember, however, that they didn't have the same kind of analysis capability back then that they've got these days (but they can probably go back and analyse old stuff they still retain). As Snowden's disclosed, you're seeing the newer systems having full-take ring buffers in nearline storage, followed by offline selection for recent access and analysis from that using a huge amount of distributed processing, and in turn automatic selected archiving out of that. It's pretty much the difference between microfiche and Google in effectiveness.
I have no idea what the NSA stores, but it's certainly feasible to store all the audio calls if they want to, and the new data center they're building has far more capacity than they would need:
Back then the key words were "echelon" and "carnivore". People had suspicions, IIRC there was an EU inquiry, but only now do we have concrete evidence.
I don't think there is any doubt about the fact that NSA wants to store it all. Just look at the short interview/documentary with Binney that was linked from the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc
We're staring at the gradual but deliberate end of privacy and its scary. The large majority of the world's population either doesn't know or care how significant or dangerous this trend is, and those few who do will find their way into surveillance databases because they act "suspiciously" by encrypting their communications and guarding their privacy.
I don't see a powerful enough counterforce against this insidious trend anywhere around the world. "Inspired" by the US, other countries are joining a competitive surveillance race stoked by private corporations selling everything from GSM monitoring to big data.
More or less, yes. However, the danger is really only to people outside the safe herd majority who might draw the wrong sort of attention. So I don't see it being a huge danger.
However, I don't think it'll ever devolve to the point where mass arrests or anything truly draconian takes place. There isn't any need in Democracy. You need to only control 51% of the engaged voters [e.g. the people who actually vote] and at least in the US the two party system controls that quite effectively.
I'm worried about this because it will lead to people getting stepped on and crushed between the massive gears of the "State Security" apparatus.
The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civil rights of Americans or even of people in other countries. For one thing, Binney also points to NSA intelligence failures in the same article, and if NSA is missing major activities of other countries (the Russian intervention in Ukraine) and nonstate terrorist groups (the "Islamic State" capture of much territory in Iraq), then surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers, and maybe it is not gathering as much data as some people claim.
Several comments posted before I read all those comments and read the fine article write about NSA blackmailing politicians. I don't believe NSA blackmail can or will happen in general, for reasons I have mentioned before here on HN. One of the most common kinds of comments here on Hacker News about issues like this is a comment that ASSUMES that if government leaders are under pervasive surveillance they are all afraid of blackmail. But I don't believe that, because some government leaders and some political candidates are essentially shameless. Even after they are caught (by old-fashioned journalism, or by a jilted lover or some unrelated criminal investigation) doing something unsavory, they are still willing to run for office, and SOME ARE REELECTED. United States Senator David Vitter was reelected in 2010 even after a scandal involving behavior that I would consider shameful,[1] and the antics of former DC mayor Marion Barry[2] are probably still notorious enough that they don't need further discussion here. In short, I call baloney on the idea that NSA can keep politicians on its leash simply by knowing their secrets. Some politicians have PUBLIC lives full of dirt, and still get elected and influence policy anyway.
The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity. Some politicians, I am quite sure, could have all their secrets revealed only to have voters think "Why is that person such a straight-arrow? Why not have some fun once in a while?" The simple fact is that there is value system diversity in the United States electorate, and there is personal conduct probity variance among United States politicians, and there isn't any universal way to unduly influence politicians merely through even the most diligent efforts to discover personal secrets. If politicians think that NSA is going too far (as evidently several politicians from more than one party do think), then they will receive plenty of support from the general public to rein in the surveillance. (Obligatory disclaimer: Yes, I am a lawyer, who as a judicial clerk for my state's Supreme Court used to review case files on attorney misconduct, and, yes, some of my law school classmates are elected officials, including one member of Congress. I am absolutely certain that there are enough politicians ready to mobilize to roll back NSA surveillance programs if they really think the programs are excessive in their scope.)
First of all, whether they are shameless or not doesn't really matter. If sexually explicit pictures of a politician end up on the internet, his reputation takes damage. It's beyond his control. Plenty of politicians are willing to go to great lengths to avoid this. So what does it matter if he's shameless or not?
Second of all, politicians and other powerful people might have something to hide that isn't just embarrassing but is also illegal. It's certainly not beyond the capabilities of the NSA to target powerful people that oppose the NSA while ignoring those that support them.
For example, in the news you might read about a CEO that gets convicted of insider trading. Nothing to worry about, right? Well, what if the NSA purposefully targeted him because they don't like whatever it is he's doing? Using parallel construction, it wouldn't even have links to the NSA.
>but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civil rights of Americans or even of people in other countries.
At this point in the debate it has been observed on a number of occasions that ranking officials at the NSA are dishonest. They have made comments both sworn, and in general press releases / statements (on the record) that have later been proven false; and we have reason to believe those officials knew they were making false or misleading statements at the time. So in short, the NSA, and the intelligence community in general have destroyed their credibility.
>Several comments ... write about NSA blackmailing politicians. I don't believe it will happen in general, for reasons I have mentioned before here on HN.
I personally suspect that it already happens. We know that it has happened before (it was a favorite tactic of J Edna Hoover). I see no reason to think that it can't/isn't currently happening.
>I call baloney on the idea that NSA can keep politicians on its leash simply by knowing their secrets. Some politicians have PUBLIC lives full of dirt, and still get elected and influence policy anyway.
I think that is a naive outlook, and that naughty habits of conduct actually serve the purposes of an extortionate NSA/FBI quite well. The NSA does not need to "keep politicians on a leash". They may merely need an occasional favorable vote or motion on the floor. Knowing the internal communications of congressional staffers (and their normal voting habits), they wouldn't need to risk extra exposure to get a marginal vote over the hump. Not to mention getting people like Ruppersberger, Rogers, Feinstein, etc. appointed to the appropriate committees.
The fact that some politicians run successful campaigns despite imperfect, even scandalous personal lives isn't proof that every politician / official is indifferent about their reputation, or that they are invulnerable to blackmail.
I can't really address your last points as they are your personal opinions but I think that most Americans have very naive and uninformed notions about how governance actually works, as opposed to the textbook version of it we were all taught in school.
1) It doesn't require a revelation to be career ending for the person involved to be believe it could be damaging (and therefore be susceptible to blackmail).
2) It doesn't require all politicians to be be lack personal integrity and give way to blackmail, even a few can tip a balance.
3) Selective/distorted leaking could also tip the balance in places as to who gets elected.
4) Calls could be monitored to take advantage in negotiations for example by knowing what the real bottom line is in a negotiation, knowing which parts of a coalition can be picked off and exactly what they have been offered.
The question is not could the NSA take absolute control of all politicians but how many they would need to cause real corruption of the process. And I'm not saying that they are doing it now but that they shouldn't be allowed to get to a position where they could.
Regarding this in your disclaimer: "I am absolutely certain that there are enough politicians ready to mobilize to roll back NSA surveillance programs if they really think the programs are excessive in their scope."
Firstly there is no sign that they knew anything of the scope until Snowden, secondly "why aren't they doing it?" or failing that "if what we now know isn't excessive what would be?"
>United States Senator David Vitter was reelected in 2010 even after a scandal involving behavior that I would consider shameful,[1] and the antics of former DC mayor Marion Barry[2] are probably still notorious enough that they don't need further discussion here.
This is sex dirt and drug dirt. Money dirt is crucial to the functioning of politics, and I'd like to see a similar list of politicians who have survived evidence of kickbacks, bribery, money laundering, and misuse of campaign funds. Sleeping with someone other than your wife while being videotaped smoking crack will not put you in prison.
>I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity.
For one thing, Binney also points to NSA intelligence failures in the same article, and if NSA is missing major activities of other countries (the Russian intervention in Ukraine) and nonstate terrorist groups (the "Islamic State" capture of much territory in Iraq), then surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers, and maybe it is not gathering as much data as some people claim.
I do not mean this as an ad hominem, but just by this statement, the rest of your arguments comes off as absurdly naive. Have you considered that perhaps the NSA and all the other "alphabet" organizations don't actually care much about accomplishing their stated goal, but are instead working tirelessly to amass power and influence through the machinations of the state? The linear way in which you assess personal and organizational motivations is simplistic to the point of uselessness.
Very few people or organizations with power are doing what they say. Instead, you must ascertain their intentions by what they do. This is politics 101. There are countless examples of this throughout history, but now is neither the time nor place to enumerate them all.
The real question to ask is, how in the name of Alan Turing's ghost did the NSA, CIA, FBI and the rest of the spooks with all their capabilities not find Osama, or Saddam's WMDs, or the Russian invasion, or...? Hint: it's not incompetence.
TL;DR: First order analysis of intention based upon a person or organization's stated intent are rarely correct. Instead, empirical modelling of behavior over time is required to ascertain true intent.
I'm wondering if the large scale data gathering (and I take your point about the organisation perhaps not being able to process all the data it has) is actually detracting from more focused action on appropriate targets, i.e. actual enemies of the state who represent a real and present danger of death or injury?
I've witnessed the assumptions that senior managers sometimes make in medium to large organisations that what they call 'IT' will somehow improve things or answer vital questions when in fact it is the observation of a business process with steps in detail that is needed to find the bottlenecks.
Perhaps I'm being cynical but the 'selling' of large volume data collection (even if a lot of that data has no predictive value and remains static on the hard drives in the data centre) to the politicians might be seen as guaranteeing budget.
> if NSA is missing major activities of other countries (the Russian intervention in Ukraine) and nonstate terrorist groups (the "Islamic State" capture of much territory in Iraq), then surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers
Or maybe foreign intelligence is simply far more difficult.
I can't imagine its easy to intercept high level government communications in Russia where they can simply order US bases companies to turn over user data.
I legitimately believe the greatest threat to most controversy scandals is individuals like you, who with long posts of obfuscation and obscurant arguments attempt to meddle with any bit of chance that any consensus or unity will form. To people like you, once we have enough evidence that would satisfy you, much would be lost.
I see no reason to trust you after posts like these. You have said so little with so much text. It shows that you were a lawyer.
You can collect lots of data without finding the terrorists, because to find the terrorists you have to do a good job analyzing all that data. But even if you're not doing good analysis, you can still keep the data in your back pocket to target anyone you wish.
As to whether scandals are effective, one counterexample is Eliot Spitzer.
Whether or not the data is analyzed in a timely manner is irrelevant to its' legality or morality (speaking solely on spying within the US.) One would assume that both competent terrorists and Russia have had proper NSA counter measures in place far before Snowden's leak. Indeed, bin Laden was able to remain hidden for a very long time. What we have seen is plenty of stories of dumb Westerners attempting to become jihadists.
NSA blackmail is far fetched. Of immediate concern is NSA employees inappropriately spying on other Americans. This has already happened multiple times that we know about: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-23/nsa-analysts-intent... Lapses at the companies which conduct bulk top secret clearance checks should only raise more alarms.
The most recent doc leak demonstrates that not only was a contractor such as Snowden capable of searching and extracting data but it was done so without the NSA having any idea. No paper trail. How did someone get certain information on you or did they? No one knows. Blackmail hardly necessary if politically charged attacks reap large rewards by crippling a citizen running for office or an attorney general investigating a corrupt corporation. Anyone could be targeted: a sitting congressman, someone running for office, a federal judge, friends, children, family. Conducted in a veil of secrecy with secret oversight guarded by a national security mandate leaves no accountability: a total abandonment of America's foundation of checks and balances.
In the longer term, this behavior is more grim than that posed by a rogue individual such as Snowden. If the existence of the NSA and its spying on Americans is fundamental to national security anyone who opposes this behavior is as big of a threat as a bin Laden. It becomes appropriate to target not only Americans but also sitting government officials who pose a threat. Congress's muted reactions could leave one to believe this is already the reality. At the least, the fear is there.
Integrity and values are shallow and attach only individually to a mortal man. If an institution or government is built without transparency and without a balance of power, eventually, at some time bad people will gain control. They may be intentionally bad, seeking nefarious and self-motivated gain, or it may be unintentional: simply an absence of knowledge in a certain area which produces disastrous decision making. The Catholic church abuse scandals presented a mixture of both. Because the institution was deeply opaque and without proper checks and balances, widespread failure occurred. Even lives devoted to continuous moral contemplations, recitations and displays of charity could make up for this.
...surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers, and maybe it is not gathering as much data as some people claim.
That's just as speculative as absolutely every other bit of speculation that's flying around, though.
If you're in the NSA's shoes, and it turns out your budget is insufficient to analyze the mass of stuff you're recording, you don't stop recording stuff. You'd use this "analysis crisis" to justify additional budget for expanded analysis efforts, especially if it takes the form of automatic systems developed and sold by contractors located in the districts of selected legislators.
My own speculation is that yes, they're recording and keeping (for a little while, at least) absolutely everything they can get their hands on, doing massive damage to the ideals of freedom and democracy and America in general in the process, but surprise surprise, all that recording simply turns out to be much less useful than everyone had hoped.
"The police," broadly speaking, have argued for (often successfully) more and more high-tech spying capability for many decades now, but it's not obvious that such capabilities have made any big improvement in public safety. We may all fantasize about magic wands that could make our jobs easier; for some reason, American authoritarians actually believe they can buy such a thing.
Power corrupts, with all this unchecked surveillance somebody is going to use it against their political rivals it's inevitable. There could be lower level corruption too with DEA agents splitting the spoils of busts with NSA analysts in exchange for intel. Lobbyist payoffs for industrial espionage or intel on protester action against their pipeline plans. If none of this is reigned in who knows how long democracy will last, all the ingredients for a totalitarian state are ready.
The "shameless" ones are usually working for NSA. The shameless ones don't tend to be the "good guys", but the corrupt/easily compromised and bought politicians.
Thanks for the several comments about my comment. I upvoted quite a few, because they made thoughtful points. I appreciate thoughtful discussion of public policy issues, especially from people who disagree with me, because that helps me learn more about the world.
Some of the thoughtful points brought up in discussion of my parent comment of course address important issues that I didn't discuss at length in the parent comment. I should make clear that I fully agree with everyone here that if the common people of the United States (or of any other country) don't work together zealously and with mental toughness and solidarity to defend basic civil rights, then we are all hosed. I've seen one country's transformation from stark dictatorship to democracy and rule by law first-hand,[1] and that experience makes me very eager indeed never to see the United States slide into dictatorship. Similarly, I'd be happy to see the "tyranny of the Taliban"[2] reported on by the Guardian newspaper (the same newspaper that is the source for the article we are all discussing here) fall everywhere, and never return. People who have the dictatorial impulse try to spread their control as far as they can reach, and it takes concerted action to fight for and maintain freedom, which is why I frequently recommend that my fellow Hacker News participants study the writings of the Albert Einstein Institution,[3] based on the experiences of people power movements that have overthrown dictatorships.
Simply put, I am one of many Americans who has not only participated in public protests about NSA activities in view of my local police and TV cameras,[4] and I will continue to decry and protest about interference of my freedom or my family's freedom by anyone. Along the way, I am trying to engage in what one thoughtful comment described as discussions around "threat mitigation and risk mitigation," to understand better what private actions on my own part, what governmental actions by my government, and what actions by other actors will best maximize your freedom and mine.
>The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civil rights of Americans or even of people in other countries.
As a European, with a much more turbulent and close-up sense of history (including actual dictatorships in our recent past, in several countries, or the "democratic" governments involved even in actual bomb attacks against their own citizens, usually with the support of the US too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio ), I'm always amused by this kind of non-cynical naivety.
I guess it's the same way a non-criminal black person in the US, given their historical experiences, comes to understand that "justice" largely caters to some privileges and biases, whereas some protected suburban white child might have a much more naive approach.
What I'm getting at is: when it comes to those kind of operations, always assume the worse. And the so called "abuses" are seldom done by some "bad apples", they are built into the system.
>The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity.
Another case in point. My take is that tons of people "lack personal integrity", and a certain loss of it is a pre-requisite for a succesful career in politics.
But in an a higher level, it's also that whether people in politics have "personal integrity" or not is besides the point.
The system can operate without integrity, even if most of it's players have "personal integrity".
For one, personal integrity is totally compatible with doing bad -- it only requires that you believe that the "bad" has to be done for an ultimately good cause (e.g surveillance and safety).
Plus, ethical systems (that guide "integrity") have many levels, strict conformance to the law and professional ethics is just one of them. For example, a cop that plants evidence on some guy, perhaps does not do it because he "lacks personal integrity" (e.g to pad his arrest record), but because he really believes the guy is guilty and that it's his duty as a good guy to put him in prison. That the guy could be innocent, and what he's doing is morally wrong, doesn't cross his mind, because he is convinced.
There are not a lot of things they are not allowed to intercept, and it is very unclear (and classified!) what their interpretation of those rules are.
But here's the rub - who still uses audio calls? Its a point of deminishing intelligence. That's like saying that 80% of all 8-tracks are now in 1970 cars (as a statement in 2014). Its just not relevant.
Uh, essentially everyone? I have a small VoIP company and we were handling around a billion calls a week. You have a really terrible selection bias if you think people aren't using audio calls. In fact, audio calls are on the RISE because of easy and cheap international calling. We have clients that have customers that literally leave their phones open to their families 8 hours a day. Just on and walking around the house.
There have been at least 15-20 trillion constitutional violations
It is an amusing, even throwaway line, but it has a horrific message - the US administration is happy to sail so close to the line of totalitarianism that it will possibly violate the constitution a trillion times. In the UK we jus found out similar legislation is unconstitutional and we are hurriedly writing another law to get round it. _sigh_
What happens when a country that really cares about it's constitution has to rush an amendment through or face civil rights violations from everyone?
[+] [-] eli|11 years ago|reply
I think he meant that the NSA had access to the 80% of calls that are routed through the US, not the the NSA is recording and storing literally every single one of them. I think he was misquoted or misspoke.
William Binney hasn't worked for the NSA since 2001. Were they recording all calls back then? Did someone still there leak new information to him?
[+] [-] sp332|11 years ago|reply
Bahamas: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/05/19/data-p...
Afghanistan: https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html
[+] [-] muaddirac|11 years ago|reply
It definitely seems like he meant that 80% of calls are recorded and stored. Whether that's true or not will (hopefully) come out in time.
[+] [-] Shivetya|11 years ago|reply
the libertarian in me is greatly annoyed they can do this.
[+] [-] AlyssaRowan|11 years ago|reply
The NSA's own BLARNEY initiative for this stuff dates back to 1978, although I think GCHQ beat them to the punch in effective mass telephony intercept - the first one I'm aware of started in the early 1980s, although that is offline, and probably no longer archived as the media (digital tape with low-bitrate encoded audio) would probably have degraded beyond all usefulness by now (and it sounded pretty crunchy in the first place, I understand, kinda like a bad squelchy lower-side-band transmission!).
Remember, however, that they didn't have the same kind of analysis capability back then that they've got these days (but they can probably go back and analyse old stuff they still retain). As Snowden's disclosed, you're seeing the newer systems having full-take ring buffers in nearline storage, followed by offline selection for recent access and analysis from that using a huge amount of distributed processing, and in turn automatic selected archiving out of that. It's pretty much the difference between microfiche and Google in effectiveness.
[+] [-] DennisP|11 years ago|reply
http://blog.archive.org/2013/06/15/cost-to-store-all-us-phon...
[+] [-] nitrogen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asgard1024|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fit2rule|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r0h1n|11 years ago|reply
I don't see a powerful enough counterforce against this insidious trend anywhere around the world. "Inspired" by the US, other countries are joining a competitive surveillance race stoked by private corporations selling everything from GSM monitoring to big data.
</rant>
[+] [-] disputin|11 years ago|reply
And EFF is NSA centric - is there a UK equivalent? Why are GCHQ getting insignificant heat?
[+] [-] Lendal|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opendais|11 years ago|reply
However, I don't think it'll ever devolve to the point where mass arrests or anything truly draconian takes place. There isn't any need in Democracy. You need to only control 51% of the engaged voters [e.g. the people who actually vote] and at least in the US the two party system controls that quite effectively.
I'm worried about this because it will lead to people getting stepped on and crushed between the massive gears of the "State Security" apparatus.
[+] [-] tokenadult|11 years ago|reply
Several comments posted before I read all those comments and read the fine article write about NSA blackmailing politicians. I don't believe NSA blackmail can or will happen in general, for reasons I have mentioned before here on HN. One of the most common kinds of comments here on Hacker News about issues like this is a comment that ASSUMES that if government leaders are under pervasive surveillance they are all afraid of blackmail. But I don't believe that, because some government leaders and some political candidates are essentially shameless. Even after they are caught (by old-fashioned journalism, or by a jilted lover or some unrelated criminal investigation) doing something unsavory, they are still willing to run for office, and SOME ARE REELECTED. United States Senator David Vitter was reelected in 2010 even after a scandal involving behavior that I would consider shameful,[1] and the antics of former DC mayor Marion Barry[2] are probably still notorious enough that they don't need further discussion here. In short, I call baloney on the idea that NSA can keep politicians on its leash simply by knowing their secrets. Some politicians have PUBLIC lives full of dirt, and still get elected and influence policy anyway.
The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity. Some politicians, I am quite sure, could have all their secrets revealed only to have voters think "Why is that person such a straight-arrow? Why not have some fun once in a while?" The simple fact is that there is value system diversity in the United States electorate, and there is personal conduct probity variance among United States politicians, and there isn't any universal way to unduly influence politicians merely through even the most diligent efforts to discover personal secrets. If politicians think that NSA is going too far (as evidently several politicians from more than one party do think), then they will receive plenty of support from the general public to rein in the surveillance. (Obligatory disclaimer: Yes, I am a lawyer, who as a judicial clerk for my state's Supreme Court used to review case files on attorney misconduct, and, yes, some of my law school classmates are elected officials, including one member of Congress. I am absolutely certain that there are enough politicians ready to mobilize to roll back NSA surveillance programs if they really think the programs are excessive in their scope.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vitter#D.C._Madam_scanda...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry#1990_arrest_.26_d...
[+] [-] MisterWebz|11 years ago|reply
First of all, whether they are shameless or not doesn't really matter. If sexually explicit pictures of a politician end up on the internet, his reputation takes damage. It's beyond his control. Plenty of politicians are willing to go to great lengths to avoid this. So what does it matter if he's shameless or not?
Second of all, politicians and other powerful people might have something to hide that isn't just embarrassing but is also illegal. It's certainly not beyond the capabilities of the NSA to target powerful people that oppose the NSA while ignoring those that support them.
For example, in the news you might read about a CEO that gets convicted of insider trading. Nothing to worry about, right? Well, what if the NSA purposefully targeted him because they don't like whatever it is he's doing? Using parallel construction, it wouldn't even have links to the NSA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandal...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
[+] [-] fnordfnordfnord|11 years ago|reply
At this point in the debate it has been observed on a number of occasions that ranking officials at the NSA are dishonest. They have made comments both sworn, and in general press releases / statements (on the record) that have later been proven false; and we have reason to believe those officials knew they were making false or misleading statements at the time. So in short, the NSA, and the intelligence community in general have destroyed their credibility.
>Several comments ... write about NSA blackmailing politicians. I don't believe it will happen in general, for reasons I have mentioned before here on HN.
I personally suspect that it already happens. We know that it has happened before (it was a favorite tactic of J Edna Hoover). I see no reason to think that it can't/isn't currently happening.
>I call baloney on the idea that NSA can keep politicians on its leash simply by knowing their secrets. Some politicians have PUBLIC lives full of dirt, and still get elected and influence policy anyway.
I think that is a naive outlook, and that naughty habits of conduct actually serve the purposes of an extortionate NSA/FBI quite well. The NSA does not need to "keep politicians on a leash". They may merely need an occasional favorable vote or motion on the floor. Knowing the internal communications of congressional staffers (and their normal voting habits), they wouldn't need to risk extra exposure to get a marginal vote over the hump. Not to mention getting people like Ruppersberger, Rogers, Feinstein, etc. appointed to the appropriate committees.
The fact that some politicians run successful campaigns despite imperfect, even scandalous personal lives isn't proof that every politician / official is indifferent about their reputation, or that they are invulnerable to blackmail.
I can't really address your last points as they are your personal opinions but I think that most Americans have very naive and uninformed notions about how governance actually works, as opposed to the textbook version of it we were all taught in school.
[+] [-] josephlord|11 years ago|reply
2) It doesn't require all politicians to be be lack personal integrity and give way to blackmail, even a few can tip a balance.
3) Selective/distorted leaking could also tip the balance in places as to who gets elected.
4) Calls could be monitored to take advantage in negotiations for example by knowing what the real bottom line is in a negotiation, knowing which parts of a coalition can be picked off and exactly what they have been offered.
The question is not could the NSA take absolute control of all politicians but how many they would need to cause real corruption of the process. And I'm not saying that they are doing it now but that they shouldn't be allowed to get to a position where they could.
Regarding this in your disclaimer: "I am absolutely certain that there are enough politicians ready to mobilize to roll back NSA surveillance programs if they really think the programs are excessive in their scope."
Firstly there is no sign that they knew anything of the scope until Snowden, secondly "why aren't they doing it?" or failing that "if what we now know isn't excessive what would be?"
Disclaimer: Not a US resident or citizen.
[+] [-] pessimizer|11 years ago|reply
This is sex dirt and drug dirt. Money dirt is crucial to the functioning of politics, and I'd like to see a similar list of politicians who have survived evidence of kickbacks, bribery, money laundering, and misuse of campaign funds. Sleeping with someone other than your wife while being videotaped smoking crack will not put you in prison.
>I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity.
This is a straw man.
[+] [-] FD3SA|11 years ago|reply
I do not mean this as an ad hominem, but just by this statement, the rest of your arguments comes off as absurdly naive. Have you considered that perhaps the NSA and all the other "alphabet" organizations don't actually care much about accomplishing their stated goal, but are instead working tirelessly to amass power and influence through the machinations of the state? The linear way in which you assess personal and organizational motivations is simplistic to the point of uselessness.
Very few people or organizations with power are doing what they say. Instead, you must ascertain their intentions by what they do. This is politics 101. There are countless examples of this throughout history, but now is neither the time nor place to enumerate them all.
The real question to ask is, how in the name of Alan Turing's ghost did the NSA, CIA, FBI and the rest of the spooks with all their capabilities not find Osama, or Saddam's WMDs, or the Russian invasion, or...? Hint: it's not incompetence.
TL;DR: First order analysis of intention based upon a person or organization's stated intent are rarely correct. Instead, empirical modelling of behavior over time is required to ascertain true intent.
[+] [-] keithpeter|11 years ago|reply
I've witnessed the assumptions that senior managers sometimes make in medium to large organisations that what they call 'IT' will somehow improve things or answer vital questions when in fact it is the observation of a business process with steps in detail that is needed to find the bottlenecks.
Perhaps I'm being cynical but the 'selling' of large volume data collection (even if a lot of that data has no predictive value and remains static on the hard drives in the data centre) to the politicians might be seen as guaranteeing budget.
[+] [-] katbyte|11 years ago|reply
Or maybe foreign intelligence is simply far more difficult.
I can't imagine its easy to intercept high level government communications in Russia where they can simply order US bases companies to turn over user data.
[+] [-] eruditely|11 years ago|reply
I see no reason to trust you after posts like these. You have said so little with so much text. It shows that you were a lawyer.
[+] [-] ryanklee|11 years ago|reply
The parent's comment, even if disagreeable in some regards, is substantial and the discussion is better for it having been made.
[+] [-] DennisP|11 years ago|reply
As to whether scandals are effective, one counterexample is Eliot Spitzer.
[+] [-] AJ007|11 years ago|reply
NSA blackmail is far fetched. Of immediate concern is NSA employees inappropriately spying on other Americans. This has already happened multiple times that we know about: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-23/nsa-analysts-intent... Lapses at the companies which conduct bulk top secret clearance checks should only raise more alarms.
The most recent doc leak demonstrates that not only was a contractor such as Snowden capable of searching and extracting data but it was done so without the NSA having any idea. No paper trail. How did someone get certain information on you or did they? No one knows. Blackmail hardly necessary if politically charged attacks reap large rewards by crippling a citizen running for office or an attorney general investigating a corrupt corporation. Anyone could be targeted: a sitting congressman, someone running for office, a federal judge, friends, children, family. Conducted in a veil of secrecy with secret oversight guarded by a national security mandate leaves no accountability: a total abandonment of America's foundation of checks and balances.
In the longer term, this behavior is more grim than that posed by a rogue individual such as Snowden. If the existence of the NSA and its spying on Americans is fundamental to national security anyone who opposes this behavior is as big of a threat as a bin Laden. It becomes appropriate to target not only Americans but also sitting government officials who pose a threat. Congress's muted reactions could leave one to believe this is already the reality. At the least, the fear is there.
Integrity and values are shallow and attach only individually to a mortal man. If an institution or government is built without transparency and without a balance of power, eventually, at some time bad people will gain control. They may be intentionally bad, seeking nefarious and self-motivated gain, or it may be unintentional: simply an absence of knowledge in a certain area which produces disastrous decision making. The Catholic church abuse scandals presented a mixture of both. Because the institution was deeply opaque and without proper checks and balances, widespread failure occurred. Even lives devoted to continuous moral contemplations, recitations and displays of charity could make up for this.
[+] [-] Lagged2Death|11 years ago|reply
That's just as speculative as absolutely every other bit of speculation that's flying around, though.
If you're in the NSA's shoes, and it turns out your budget is insufficient to analyze the mass of stuff you're recording, you don't stop recording stuff. You'd use this "analysis crisis" to justify additional budget for expanded analysis efforts, especially if it takes the form of automatic systems developed and sold by contractors located in the districts of selected legislators.
My own speculation is that yes, they're recording and keeping (for a little while, at least) absolutely everything they can get their hands on, doing massive damage to the ideals of freedom and democracy and America in general in the process, but surprise surprise, all that recording simply turns out to be much less useful than everyone had hoped.
"The police," broadly speaking, have argued for (often successfully) more and more high-tech spying capability for many decades now, but it's not obvious that such capabilities have made any big improvement in public safety. We may all fantasize about magic wands that could make our jobs easier; for some reason, American authoritarians actually believe they can buy such a thing.
[+] [-] dobbsbob|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] higherpurpose|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenadult|11 years ago|reply
Some of the thoughtful points brought up in discussion of my parent comment of course address important issues that I didn't discuss at length in the parent comment. I should make clear that I fully agree with everyone here that if the common people of the United States (or of any other country) don't work together zealously and with mental toughness and solidarity to defend basic civil rights, then we are all hosed. I've seen one country's transformation from stark dictatorship to democracy and rule by law first-hand,[1] and that experience makes me very eager indeed never to see the United States slide into dictatorship. Similarly, I'd be happy to see the "tyranny of the Taliban"[2] reported on by the Guardian newspaper (the same newspaper that is the source for the article we are all discussing here) fall everywhere, and never return. People who have the dictatorial impulse try to spread their control as far as they can reach, and it takes concerted action to fight for and maintain freedom, which is why I frequently recommend that my fellow Hacker News participants study the writings of the Albert Einstein Institution,[3] based on the experiences of people power movements that have overthrown dictatorships.
Simply put, I am one of many Americans who has not only participated in public protests about NSA activities in view of my local police and TV cameras,[4] and I will continue to decry and protest about interference of my freedom or my family's freedom by anyone. Along the way, I am trying to engage in what one thoughtful comment described as discussions around "threat mitigation and risk mitigation," to understand better what private actions on my own part, what governmental actions by my government, and what actions by other actors will best maximize your freedom and mine.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985720
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/18/terrorism.afgha...
[3] http://www.aeinstein.org/downloads/
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5992149
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
As a European, with a much more turbulent and close-up sense of history (including actual dictatorships in our recent past, in several countries, or the "democratic" governments involved even in actual bomb attacks against their own citizens, usually with the support of the US too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio ), I'm always amused by this kind of non-cynical naivety.
I guess it's the same way a non-criminal black person in the US, given their historical experiences, comes to understand that "justice" largely caters to some privileges and biases, whereas some protected suburban white child might have a much more naive approach.
What I'm getting at is: when it comes to those kind of operations, always assume the worse. And the so called "abuses" are seldom done by some "bad apples", they are built into the system.
>The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity.
Another case in point. My take is that tons of people "lack personal integrity", and a certain loss of it is a pre-requisite for a succesful career in politics.
But in an a higher level, it's also that whether people in politics have "personal integrity" or not is besides the point.
The system can operate without integrity, even if most of it's players have "personal integrity".
For one, personal integrity is totally compatible with doing bad -- it only requires that you believe that the "bad" has to be done for an ultimately good cause (e.g surveillance and safety).
Plus, ethical systems (that guide "integrity") have many levels, strict conformance to the law and professional ethics is just one of them. For example, a cop that plants evidence on some guy, perhaps does not do it because he "lacks personal integrity" (e.g to pad his arrest record), but because he really believes the guy is guilty and that it's his duty as a good guy to put him in prison. That the guy could be innocent, and what he's doing is morally wrong, doesn't cross his mind, because he is convinced.
[+] [-] PeterisP|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diminoten|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dbpokorny|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlyssaRowan|11 years ago|reply
And then they break them sometimes anyway.
Same with GCHQ, really.
[+] [-] spacefight|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofmangos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drcode|11 years ago|reply
Scary shit...
[+] [-] narrator|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timdiggerm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg_is_a_butt|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] _pmf_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnnyBuffalo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelGG|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|11 years ago|reply
It is an amusing, even throwaway line, but it has a horrific message - the US administration is happy to sail so close to the line of totalitarianism that it will possibly violate the constitution a trillion times. In the UK we jus found out similar legislation is unconstitutional and we are hurriedly writing another law to get round it. _sigh_
What happens when a country that really cares about it's constitution has to rush an amendment through or face civil rights violations from everyone?