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The FBI's founding director had this very tactic as his modus operandi. It isn't hard to speculate that the culture of the FBI has supported political extortion

The FBI's founding director had this very tactic as his modus operandi. It isn't hard to speculate that the culture of the FBI has supported political extortion for well over 80 years now.

tptacek 11y ago
That's true. J Edgar Hoover did do this. Of course, Hoover is also one of the great villains of US history, and there was a major course-correction in the 1970s regarding the legal process federal law enforcement has to adhere to. "The FBI is run by the modern equivalent of J. Edgar Hoover" is also an amusing and dramatic interpretation of the facts we have now. But they don't square well with other facts we know, such as Ashcroft's hospital-bed refusal to reauthorize STELLARWIND. And that was John Ashcroft, who is not exactly a cuddly Sesame Street muppet on these issues. In case I need to make this clear: I don't think sacrificing the integrity of online services for DOJ goals is a good tradeoff. The wins seem very marginal, and the long-term costs are huge. But I'm a technologist with a security/privacy concentration, and Congress is composed mostly of lawyers.
- icanhackit 11y ago
  But they don't square well with other facts we know, such as Ashcroft's hospital-bed refusal to reauthorize STELLARWIND. More info: In March 2004, the Justice Department under Ashcroft ruled that the Stellar Wind domestic intelligence program was illegal. The day after the ruling, Ashcroft became critically ill with acute pancreatitis. President Bush sent his White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr. to Ashcroft's hospital bed. They wanted him to sign a document reversing the Justice Department's ruling. But the semi-conscious Ashcroft refused to sign; Acting Attorney General James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, head of the Office of Legal Counsel for DOJ, were there to back him up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft#As_U.S._Attorney_General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft#As_U.S._Attorney... Original Source: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09072007/transcript2.html http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09072007/transcript2.html
  - tptacek 11y ago
    This story is also featured in Barton Gellman's _Angler_, which is a great book, and if you're following the Snowden drama Gellman's name should be familiar.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Hoover had plenty of apologists who were arguing that he was using these tactics only for good causes (such as against communism, today it would be terrorism or child pornography), it took a long time before anybody dared to speak out against this, he was simply too powerful. Most likely today such direct blackmail of (domestic) politicians and other officials is not the case but you can't really rule it out completely. The bad thing is that the reputation of the FBI and other such agencies is now such that an analogy with the Hoover days can no longer be rejected out of hand 'because they'd never do such a thing'. They did in the past, for many years with many people, we know that for sure, and they quite possibly still do, see the thread linked here, after all what use could a decade old gag order have and do you actually believe that 100's of thousands of gag orders and NSLs can actually have a legitimate foundation? That's to me beyond belief, that there are 100's of thousands of instances where the authorities issue permanent gag orders with respect to information gathering on individuals and that this is all somehow both legal and proportional use of powers vested in these agencies.
  - dmix 11y ago
    > The bad thing is that the reputation of the FBI and other such agencies is now such that an analogy with the Hoover days can no longer be rejected out of hand 'because they'd never do such a thing'. Not only that but when someone's life is as public as a politician - and their career dependent on that credibility - it takes far less than Hoover-era style blackmail to ruin such a person. So even if the FBI is no longer acting like the Hoover era agents there are significant careers risks in standing up to the three-letter agencies, (and their similarily-powerful network of friends and former employees). Those risks have only grown as the power of the NSA/FBI have grown with the spread of technology/internet. The bar for making such a claim is much lower than in the 1950s, especially in the context of a politician.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      You're giving the FBI a whole lot of credit for their ability to orchestrate what would be one of the great conspiracies of the last 100 years: despite the fractious nature of modern politics, with politicians charging through revolving doors of office and then lobbying jobs all the while accusing the sitting President of being a traitor or even a foreign agent, not one of these attempts at blackmail has ever been brought to light, or even alleged, by any member of Congress on either side of the aisle.
- wfo 11y ago
  Such a villian, in fact, that a huge building in DC bears his name in order to honor him. The building that houses the very organization we are discussing in fact. Whose employees walk past his plaque and honorifics every day, witnessing a great work done by their colleagues for the sole purpose of giving him his due respect. I think things are certainly not as bad as when the FBI was literally commanded (founded, really) by a criminal and a traitor (the Ashcroft event was quite encouraging) but I'm not so sure many people in LE consider him so evil and much of his culture lives on. Though I agree with you it seems like quite a stretch to blame blackmail for any of this. More likely well-meaning people making short-sighted decisions, as it always is.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    There are also statues of Jefferson Davis in the south, and buildings at our greatest universities named after John C. Calhoun. That doesn't mean we endorse those people.
    - darkmarmot 11y ago
      Umm, it kind of does. As someone who lives in the south, it's nice to see things such as the confederate flags _finally_ getting removed. A large statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, master military tactician and a founder of the KKK, stands tall over I-65 nearby. It probably would be removed if it was not privately-owned.
pdkl95 11y ago
HN readers in particular should consider how technology has affected an important part of J. Edgar Hoover's political extortion: COINTELPRO[1]. Technology has made it a lot easier to discredit and disrupt political activists. An obvious example of how to map relationships to find potential organizers that might bring together a larger political movement is the NSA programs COTRAVELER[2], but the methods are not that different from "targeted advertising" or any Facebook-style social network. Occupy terrified a lot of people in power specifically because it didn't have an obvious minimum spanning tree to target. We even have documents from Snowden about GCHQ's version[3]. JTRIG even has a wide assortment of tools[4] available for disrupting and discrediting their targets. Their tool for "amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (Youtube)" doesn't seem particularly useful for national defense or catching terrorists - they have other tools for feeding a specific target false information. On the other hand, amplifying the popularity of a video would be very useful for propaganda. Obviously very little of this is proof. It was already frightening what J. Edgar Hoover was able to do decades ago. How would the same thing be done with the benefit of modern technology? Would you even notice it?[5] A even better question might be: given how eagerly the advertising industry used tracking technology and data mining, would you consider it likely that a government agency with little restraint or oversight would refrain from doing the same thing? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa-is-tracking-people-right-now/634/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa... [3] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ [4] https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog.html https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog.html [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzYJullFOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzYJullFOs (14 seconds of Max Headroom)
- msabalau 11y ago
  If people in power were terrified of Occupy, recent history has shown that they have had absolutely no reason to be. Consensus decision making has hamstrung progressive causes since the 70s (http://berkeleyjournal.org/2015/05/the-theology-of-consensus/ http://berkeleyjournal.org/2015/05/the-theology-of-consensus...), predating the technological toolkit which nominally justified not having a targetable leadership. It is right, fitting, and appropriate to consider how governments abuse technology. One the other hand, to descend into a fearful state about data making it "a lot easier to discredit and disrupt political activists" is both unbalanced and fundamentally disrespectful to our forebearers who faced lynching, Pinkerton detectives, the Raj's army, etc.

The FBI's founding director had this very tactic as his modus operandi. It isn't hard to speculate that the culture of the FBI has supported political extortion for well over 80 years now.

tptacek 11y ago

That's true. J Edgar Hoover did do this. Of course, Hoover is also one of the great villains of US history, and there was a major course-correction in the 1970s regarding the legal process federal law enforcement has to adhere to. "The FBI is run by the modern equivalent of J. Edgar Hoover" is also an amusing and dramatic interpretation of the facts we have now. But they don't square well with other facts we know, such as Ashcroft's hospital-bed refusal to reauthorize STELLARWIND. And that was John Ashcroft, who is not exactly a cuddly Sesame Street muppet on these issues. In case I need to make this clear: I don't think sacrificing the integrity of online services for DOJ goals is a good tradeoff. The wins seem very marginal, and the long-term costs are huge. But I'm a technologist with a security/privacy concentration, and Congress is composed mostly of lawyers.

icanhackit 11y ago
But they don't square well with other facts we know, such as Ashcroft's hospital-bed refusal to reauthorize STELLARWIND. More info: In March 2004, the Justice Department under Ashcroft ruled that the Stellar Wind domestic intelligence program was illegal. The day after the ruling, Ashcroft became critically ill with acute pancreatitis. President Bush sent his White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr. to Ashcroft's hospital bed. They wanted him to sign a document reversing the Justice Department's ruling. But the semi-conscious Ashcroft refused to sign; Acting Attorney General James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, head of the Office of Legal Counsel for DOJ, were there to back him up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft#As_U.S._Attorney_General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft#As_U.S._Attorney... Original Source: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09072007/transcript2.html http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09072007/transcript2.html
- tptacek 11y ago
  This story is also featured in Barton Gellman's _Angler_, which is a great book, and if you're following the Snowden drama Gellman's name should be familiar.
jacquesm 11y ago
Hoover had plenty of apologists who were arguing that he was using these tactics only for good causes (such as against communism, today it would be terrorism or child pornography), it took a long time before anybody dared to speak out against this, he was simply too powerful. Most likely today such direct blackmail of (domestic) politicians and other officials is not the case but you can't really rule it out completely. The bad thing is that the reputation of the FBI and other such agencies is now such that an analogy with the Hoover days can no longer be rejected out of hand 'because they'd never do such a thing'. They did in the past, for many years with many people, we know that for sure, and they quite possibly still do, see the thread linked here, after all what use could a decade old gag order have and do you actually believe that 100's of thousands of gag orders and NSLs can actually have a legitimate foundation? That's to me beyond belief, that there are 100's of thousands of instances where the authorities issue permanent gag orders with respect to information gathering on individuals and that this is all somehow both legal and proportional use of powers vested in these agencies.
- dmix 11y ago
  > The bad thing is that the reputation of the FBI and other such agencies is now such that an analogy with the Hoover days can no longer be rejected out of hand 'because they'd never do such a thing'. Not only that but when someone's life is as public as a politician - and their career dependent on that credibility - it takes far less than Hoover-era style blackmail to ruin such a person. So even if the FBI is no longer acting like the Hoover era agents there are significant careers risks in standing up to the three-letter agencies, (and their similarily-powerful network of friends and former employees). Those risks have only grown as the power of the NSA/FBI have grown with the spread of technology/internet. The bar for making such a claim is much lower than in the 1950s, especially in the context of a politician.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    You're giving the FBI a whole lot of credit for their ability to orchestrate what would be one of the great conspiracies of the last 100 years: despite the fractious nature of modern politics, with politicians charging through revolving doors of office and then lobbying jobs all the while accusing the sitting President of being a traitor or even a foreign agent, not one of these attempts at blackmail has ever been brought to light, or even alleged, by any member of Congress on either side of the aisle.
wfo 11y ago
Such a villian, in fact, that a huge building in DC bears his name in order to honor him. The building that houses the very organization we are discussing in fact. Whose employees walk past his plaque and honorifics every day, witnessing a great work done by their colleagues for the sole purpose of giving him his due respect. I think things are certainly not as bad as when the FBI was literally commanded (founded, really) by a criminal and a traitor (the Ashcroft event was quite encouraging) but I'm not so sure many people in LE consider him so evil and much of his culture lives on. Though I agree with you it seems like quite a stretch to blame blackmail for any of this. More likely well-meaning people making short-sighted decisions, as it always is.
- tptacek 11y ago
  There are also statues of Jefferson Davis in the south, and buildings at our greatest universities named after John C. Calhoun. That doesn't mean we endorse those people.
  - darkmarmot 11y ago
    Umm, it kind of does. As someone who lives in the south, it's nice to see things such as the confederate flags _finally_ getting removed. A large statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, master military tactician and a founder of the KKK, stands tall over I-65 nearby. It probably would be removed if it was not privately-owned.

pdkl95 11y ago

HN readers in particular should consider how technology has affected an important part of J. Edgar Hoover's political extortion: COINTELPRO[1]. Technology has made it a lot easier to discredit and disrupt political activists. An obvious example of how to map relationships to find potential organizers that might bring together a larger political movement is the NSA programs COTRAVELER[2], but the methods are not that different from "targeted advertising" or any Facebook-style social network. Occupy terrified a lot of people in power specifically because it didn't have an obvious minimum spanning tree to target. We even have documents from Snowden about GCHQ's version[3]. JTRIG even has a wide assortment of tools[4] available for disrupting and discrediting their targets. Their tool for "amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (Youtube)" doesn't seem particularly useful for national defense or catching terrorists - they have other tools for feeding a specific target false information. On the other hand, amplifying the popularity of a video would be very useful for propaganda. Obviously very little of this is proof. It was already frightening what J. Edgar Hoover was able to do decades ago. How would the same thing be done with the benefit of modern technology? Would you even notice it?[5] A even better question might be: given how eagerly the advertising industry used tracking technology and data mining, would you consider it likely that a government agency with little restraint or oversight would refrain from doing the same thing? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa-is-tracking-people-right-now/634/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa... [3] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ [4] https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog.html https://www.schneier.com/gchq-catalog.html [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzYJullFOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRzYJullFOs (14 seconds of Max Headroom)

msabalau 11y ago
If people in power were terrified of Occupy, recent history has shown that they have had absolutely no reason to be. Consensus decision making has hamstrung progressive causes since the 70s (http://berkeleyjournal.org/2015/05/the-theology-of-consensus/ http://berkeleyjournal.org/2015/05/the-theology-of-consensus...), predating the technological toolkit which nominally justified not having a targetable leadership. It is right, fitting, and appropriate to consider how governments abuse technology. One the other hand, to descend into a fearful state about data making it "a lot easier to discredit and disrupt political activists" is both unbalanced and fundamentally disrespectful to our forebearers who faced lynching, Pinkerton detectives, the Raj's army, etc.