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As commented somewhere in the Schneier thread: Presumably Brennan refers to the big players, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel (ME) et al. These compan
by chopin 10y ago
As commented somewhere in the Schneier thread:
Presumably Brennan refers to the big players, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel (ME) et al. These companies are delivering crypto and/or hardware for the masses and could be subverted maybe with small short term effect.
Of course, the terrorists will switch. And Mr. Brennan knows that. This is the revealing part: It's about mass surveillance of people who are not terrorists by any means.
- peteretep 10y agoWhat's the motivation for mass surveillance of people who aren't terrorists in the US?
- TheCondor 10y agoMoney. It's all subcontracted out. It costs tons to do a full nation the size of the US and it's dramatically cheaper than a foreign nation. There are also the conspiracy type reasons but I think it's just a jobs program for white upper middle class men.
- nerdponx 10y agoThis. But I think there is an aspect of misguided "we're doing the right thing" doublethink layered on top of it.
- pdkl95 10y agoThe commercial surveillance complex is just a special case of the military industrial complex. No conspiracy is necessary to explain the greed in traditional defense contracting; surveillance tech is just the latest variation. Also, the current obsession with machine learning is amplifying the problem. It's easy to misuse data analysis (e.g. overfitting the model until it says what you want it to say). Data is seen as valuable on it's own even if it isn't useful "now". This produces an effect similar to tulip-mania where everybody wants as much data as possible even if it isn't currently useful. Finally, add in bad incentives where failure is rewarded with more contracts. As Mudge (Peiter Zatko) gave a very good description[1] of this problem which he called "game theory is a bitch". The solution is to make retaining data toxic with liability. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9wXq6oRBnI#t=1173 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9wXq6oRBnI#t=1173
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoThis can't be overstated. "Terrorism" is HUGE business.
- CapitalistCartr 10y agoControl. Power. Authoritarianism. Corporate paternalism.
- div 10y agoKnowledge is power.
- pdkl95 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IAO-logo.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IAO-logo.png From the logo of the former Information Awareness Office (under the pyramid-with-eye, of course): scientia est potentia
- yarper 10y agoThey're all terrorists until proven otherwise!
- sleepychu 10y agoPerhaps not using the ubiquitous products makes you a terrorist? It's a tradeoff, if you really believe that the government are motivated solely for your protection then of course you would allow them unlimited access into your personal life (as long as it was invisible to you, via your phone/computer, why would you care? They only use that information to help you. Think Doctor and seeing you naked, you trust that they don't care about seeing you naked, they just want to help you.) If you're the director of the CIA maybe you really believe that the government having unlimited invasion of privacy is the correct way to keep everyone safe.
- nerdponx 10y agoI said this and reply to another user, but I'll say it here. I really do think that some or most of the people at the top believe, or at least have convinced themselves, that they are doing the right thing for the American people. I also think that they know more about the world than they will ever let on, and there are things that go on behind closed doors and off the record that we will never learn about, so it's tough to say what they really do and don't understand.
- Torai 10y agoIdentifying the transcendent people and activities that could undermine the status quo the CIA works to defend. Now we could argue if the CIA works for the well being of the majority of US citizens, or to defend the obscure interests of some minority. And discuss the historical role of the CIA "fighting terrorism".
- arca_vorago 10y ago1) Money. As William Binney revealed, they scrapped his multi-million dollar system that protected privacy (I still disagree with him that the collection was constitutional in the first place) for a multi-billion dollar system that wasn't nearly as effective. So in essence, one motivation would be to line the pockets of various entitles around McLean, VA and other good ol boys. 2) Control. This level of surveillance is key in the primary purpose of dissident control. This is why they are harping so much on "lone-wolf radicals" who are "radicalised by the internet". Because they want to say wolf so loud and so much that nobody has the chance to remind them about the constitution. This is also part of why you will see a huge increase in bad legislation written and passed by corrupted good ol boy house/senate. The internet is a threat to the global order due to it's decentralized nature and it's encouragement of anarchistic freedom of thought. The oligarchy are moving against the internet. 3) Fall-guys. The more sinister, grander chessboard for the supranational oligarchs is one of de-legitimizing American power and principles. I'll let you digest the details of this. Always remember where the Company got it's start. Wall Street international lawyers. I'm pretty sure McCarthy, despite his unconstitutional antics, was actually on to something... but he just didn't aim high-enough in the chain. Corruption in the three-letters is top down. http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman%27s%20CIA%20article.html http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman%27s%20CIA%2...
- ionised 10y agoControl I'm guessing. If massive financial fraud, corruption and widening inequality continue to get worse, there is going to be a lot of unrest in the western developed nations. There's only so much shit people can take, so much of their shit that can be taken from them before they realise their entire financial system and wars waged are a giant ponzi scheme set up to suck resources from the many up to the few. This shit happens in cycles. The upper echelons of society know this is coming again.
- RogtamBar 10y agoYou have heard of the concept of 'three felonies a day'. Well, combine that with knowing almost everything about everybody, and you can use the threat of charges or actually having them charged to deal with dissidents. I once knew a gun rights' activist in the US. He has friends who were targeted this way by the Federal gov't. It's not just a theoretical thing.
- jernfrost 10y agoBut these have often bought solutions from foreign companies and integrated them. One example would be Skype. The question is with the kind of regime CIA envisions would Skype ever have gotten bought by Google?
- tremon 10y agoOf course, the terrorists will switch Not only terrorists will switch. Everyone who has the option will switch. This is just another nail in the coffin for US technology companies. I'm pretty sure that when this gets through, the non-US companies will be bought en-masse by US companies, like Microsoft did with Skype.
- chopin 10y agoEveryone who has the option will switch This might be difficult. With iOS, Android or Windows you have to trust the OS Vendor. I assume especially on iOS it might be difficult to supply any meaningful encryption at all if Apple decides to not supporting it.
- zaphar 10y agoAndroid is open source so if an OS vendor outside of the United States decides to use it and provide strong encryption there is very little stopping them from doing so. A lot of the hardest work has been done already. There is a small but growing market for strong encryption. US companies will find themselves losing some amount of market share due to encryption restrictions. We already saw this once with the previous crypto wars. The U.S. thought that they could corner the market on good crypto and instead ended up losing a good portion of the market. The U.S. lost that war and they can totally lose this one for the same reason. We don't have a monopoly on good crypto in the U.S. and if they have their way we'll end up with only bad crypto.
- Hermel 10y ago> This is just another nail in the coffin for US technology companies. What are the other nails in your opinion? To me it seems that the Silicon Valley is doing quite well.
- tremon 10y agoThe other big nail is surveillance itself, especially when coupled with the fact that foreigner's data in US' corporations hands is a free-for-all for everyone.
- cschmidt 10y agoSchneier made an interesting point at his talk at DEFCON last year. He suggested people use encryption from the big players, rather than more niche crypto products. He said he thought the NSA etc. monitor users of those niche software closely, essentially getting lots of metadata about them. He suggested "hiding" in the mass of other people using big player products. Maybe the NSA wants terrorists to switch, since it would make them stand out from the crowd, creating a much smaller pool of people (terrorists and crypto geeks) to watch.
- saiya-jin 10y agothis sort of hiding sounds a bit like desperate attempt to save a lost battle of credibility of major US IT companies... no, thank you
- Johnny555 10y agoSounds like the best solution is to use the niche encryption software to encrypt your data, then wrap it up in encryption by the big players, so you keep your everyday activity under wraps, but if they can break the big-player encryption, you have another layer of protection.
- chatmasta 10y agoThe best solution is probably to communicate via encrypted stetanography in open channels. For example a Twitter account posting a bunch of cat pics with (encrypted) messages encoded in them. This way your first layer of protection is the steganography (nobody knows the message even exists), and the second layer is the encryption. I've got a side project about 10% complete that's a "stegonographic social overlay network". Fully client side JS steganographic encoding of images that are then uploaded to a choice of social media sites, and then subscribed to like RSS feeds. I think it's a cool concept.
- deelowe 10y agoMaybe, but how hard is it to derive suspension of stenography in an image for some useful level of confidence (e.g 20%, 50%, 75%)? Not crack it, but know that there's perhaps something up? Surely, just knowing which accounts are posting "suspicious" communications is valuable enough in and of itself.
- RogtamBar 10y agoHow is Facebook, a company which has probably almost since the start operated as a data collection system for CIA (see http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread291893/pg1 http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread291893/pg1 ) .. in the busienss of providing crypto?