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The problem with this analysis is that the problem set the NSA exists to address is not limited to terrorism. Most of the work they do is spying on foreign gove

The problem with this analysis is that the problem set the NSA exists to address is not limited to terrorism. Most of the work they do is spying on foreign governments in order to inform U.S. policy. Building a cost/benefit analysis of the loss of privacy effected by NSA operations on the number of lives lost to terrorism does not provide an accurate measure of the value delivered by the national-level SIGINT enterprise. With regard to the author's general point: we should indeed be very concerned with the potential for widespread surveillance to abet the violation of civil liberties or even a totalitarian takeover.

coldpie 11y ago
> Most of the work they do is spying on foreign governments in order to inform U.S. policy. Really? I'm not disputing this, but I'd love to see some evidence backing it up. What I remember from the Snowden disclosures is the vast majority of the leaked information actually did relate to violent threats to national security. Am I remembering wrong, or did I miss something?
- nickff 11y ago
  The NSA was founded in the early 1950s to be the primary signals intelligence (SigInt) branch of the US Government, largely to gather information which would be of strategic importance in the Cold War. You might look at the NSA as a SigInt counterpart to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which runs most of the spy satellites and other strategic imagery. The Wikipedia article on the NSA is quite good.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- strictnein 11y ago
  They're also charged with ComSec. If your main source of info on the NSA are the Snowden leaks, you're not getting the full picture. If you're really interested in the subject of the NSA's history, and what it does, James Bamford's work is pretty interesting. Very dry books, tinged with his politics (more so Body of Secrets [1] than the Puzzle Palace [0]), but interesting none-the-less. [0] The Puzzle Palace http://www.amazon.com/Puzzle-Palace-National-Intelligence-Or.. http://www.amazon.com/Puzzle-Palace-National-Intelligence-Or.... [1] Body of Secrets http://www.amazon.com/Body-Secrets-Ultra-Secret-National-Sec.. http://www.amazon.com/Body-Secrets-Ultra-Secret-National-Sec.... Body of Secrets is an easier read, because it's written more around historical events. The Puzzle Palace got a little too in the weeds for my liking. One of its primary sources were a ton of unclassified internal memos, newsletters, etc, and he goes into things like who ran grounds security at the NSA's Fort Meade location.
marcosdumay 11y ago
It does not really matter how important it is inside the NSA. Universal surveillance is useless for spying foreign governments, targeted surveillance is the tool for that. Thus, it should not enter the cost/benefit analysis anyway. (By the way, it also at best useless for fighting terrorists too...)
btilly 11y ago
I made the argument that I did because the public justification for the NSA is terrorism. But I could have made a different argument focused only on the merits of spying. Yes, it is obviously helpful to steal secrets. Yes, this gives us an edge in negotiations, allows us to steal technologies, and so on. However people get pissed off at us when they discover that we have done so. See Angela Merkel's cellphone. Some of our attempts to assist spying leave us open to harm. See backdoors deliberately left in software that black-hats later discover. Lack of trust has a cost. I've seen estimates that US companies have lost tens of billions of dollars in contracts because other countries don't trust us with their data. And when everyone knows that we spy, everyone else is likely to spy back just to level the playing field. But spying is asymmetric; small players can do it effectively with very little in the way of resources, and big players have more to lose. When I put together everything I know, I believe that our aggressive spying programs are a net economic loss for us. We could be better off by spying in a much more targeted way, but with very large penalties for anyone who we caught spying on us. Obviously I have biases and incomplete information. But I'm not convinced that spying is a good justification for the NSA, even if we were honest with ourselves about it.
- javajosh 11y ago
  >other countries don't trust us with their data. To riff on this, the reason is a cultural issue regarding the value of self-restraint. Self-restraint is no longer valued. In fact, self-restraint is considered a critical weakness. To not take any action you can get away with, that advances your interests, is weak. It's lack of value is written in stories of police brutality, it's written in the manner in which popular elections are conducted, it's written in the policies of our executive agencies, and it's written in the way business is conducted. Confronted with clear evidence of wrong-doing, leaders are no longer expected to apologize and resign; we expect them to deny, to resist, to fight to the bitter end, no matter what. They wait out the public, they wait out the courts, and they win. The question that I am having a hard time answering is simply: how did it get this way? Bush had a profound impact on this culture; there was a man who knew the anti-value of self-restraint! The anti-value of self-reflection, of taking responsibility for mistakes. Wall Street learned the anti-value of self-restraint, because they gambled, lost big, and got bailed out anyway. Police are taught the anti-value of self-restraint, because there is risk to the officer when using too little force, but virtually no risk to the officer when using too much. Power delegitimizes itself when it shows a systematic lack of self-restraint.

coldpie 11y ago

> Most of the work they do is spying on foreign governments in order to inform U.S. policy. Really? I'm not disputing this, but I'd love to see some evidence backing it up. What I remember from the Snowden disclosures is the vast majority of the leaked information actually did relate to violent threats to national security. Am I remembering wrong, or did I miss something?

nickff 11y ago
The NSA was founded in the early 1950s to be the primary signals intelligence (SigInt) branch of the US Government, largely to gather information which would be of strategic importance in the Cold War. You might look at the NSA as a SigInt counterpart to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which runs most of the spy satellites and other strategic imagery. The Wikipedia article on the NSA is quite good.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
strictnein 11y ago
They're also charged with ComSec. If your main source of info on the NSA are the Snowden leaks, you're not getting the full picture. If you're really interested in the subject of the NSA's history, and what it does, James Bamford's work is pretty interesting. Very dry books, tinged with his politics (more so Body of Secrets [1] than the Puzzle Palace [0]), but interesting none-the-less. [0] The Puzzle Palace http://www.amazon.com/Puzzle-Palace-National-Intelligence-Or.. http://www.amazon.com/Puzzle-Palace-National-Intelligence-Or.... [1] Body of Secrets http://www.amazon.com/Body-Secrets-Ultra-Secret-National-Sec.. http://www.amazon.com/Body-Secrets-Ultra-Secret-National-Sec.... Body of Secrets is an easier read, because it's written more around historical events. The Puzzle Palace got a little too in the weeds for my liking. One of its primary sources were a ton of unclassified internal memos, newsletters, etc, and he goes into things like who ran grounds security at the NSA's Fort Meade location.

marcosdumay 11y ago

It does not really matter how important it is inside the NSA. Universal surveillance is useless for spying foreign governments, targeted surveillance is the tool for that. Thus, it should not enter the cost/benefit analysis anyway. (By the way, it also at best useless for fighting terrorists too...)

btilly 11y ago

I made the argument that I did because the public justification for the NSA is terrorism. But I could have made a different argument focused only on the merits of spying. Yes, it is obviously helpful to steal secrets. Yes, this gives us an edge in negotiations, allows us to steal technologies, and so on. However people get pissed off at us when they discover that we have done so. See Angela Merkel's cellphone. Some of our attempts to assist spying leave us open to harm. See backdoors deliberately left in software that black-hats later discover. Lack of trust has a cost. I've seen estimates that US companies have lost tens of billions of dollars in contracts because other countries don't trust us with their data. And when everyone knows that we spy, everyone else is likely to spy back just to level the playing field. But spying is asymmetric; small players can do it effectively with very little in the way of resources, and big players have more to lose. When I put together everything I know, I believe that our aggressive spying programs are a net economic loss for us. We could be better off by spying in a much more targeted way, but with very large penalties for anyone who we caught spying on us. Obviously I have biases and incomplete information. But I'm not convinced that spying is a good justification for the NSA, even if we were honest with ourselves about it.

javajosh 11y ago
>other countries don't trust us with their data. To riff on this, the reason is a cultural issue regarding the value of self-restraint. Self-restraint is no longer valued. In fact, self-restraint is considered a critical weakness. To not take any action you can get away with, that advances your interests, is weak. It's lack of value is written in stories of police brutality, it's written in the manner in which popular elections are conducted, it's written in the policies of our executive agencies, and it's written in the way business is conducted. Confronted with clear evidence of wrong-doing, leaders are no longer expected to apologize and resign; we expect them to deny, to resist, to fight to the bitter end, no matter what. They wait out the public, they wait out the courts, and they win. The question that I am having a hard time answering is simply: how did it get this way? Bush had a profound impact on this culture; there was a man who knew the anti-value of self-restraint! The anti-value of self-reflection, of taking responsibility for mistakes. Wall Street learned the anti-value of self-restraint, because they gambled, lost big, and got bailed out anyway. Police are taught the anti-value of self-restraint, because there is risk to the officer when using too little force, but virtually no risk to the officer when using too much. Power delegitimizes itself when it shows a systematic lack of self-restraint.