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Automatically collecting everyone's cell phone data, has software automatically installed in Smart TV's everywhere, monitors your online footprint (emails, soci

Automatically collecting everyone's cell phone data, has software automatically installed in Smart TV's everywhere, monitors your online footprint (emails, social media[of course]). All those warning from Snowden all those secret software reveals from wikileaks an untold amount of funding from congress with virtually no oversight. And yet tons of bad things keep happening to regular citizens in the US. What exactly does the NSA do? Whom are they protecting? Cause it sure is not the average citizen. Just a random venting from a pissed of copper-top battery.

BigChiefSmokem 8y ago
It was created to work on code-breaking during World War II and then formalized by Harry Truman as an official agency. It was made to serve the military and in turn the American people but over time their mission has been perverted for the sake of security theater.
BookmarkSaver 8y ago
>And yet tons of bad things keep happening to regular citizens in the US. Like what? I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here. >What exactly does the NSA do? Whom are they protecting? Cause it sure is not the average citizen. ??? Sounds like you know absolutely nothing about espionage. Maybe you are right, but intelligence agencies don't talk about their activities, even their successes, for very good reason.
- ianai 8y ago
  Yes and I imagine even having records on everyone wouldn’t be enough to catch all cases. Some of the recent offenders really seemed to only identify as problems during the act. No chance to stop them.
- scrumption 8y ago
  >Like what? I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here. Uh, the constant mass shootings that have occurred over the past year wherein, 100% of the time, the perp was already known to police and FBI and had a very public troubling online presence detailing their years of mental instability and virulent racism? >intelligence agencies don't talk about their activities, even their successes, for very good reason. The hell are you talking about? The FBI is constantly publicly congratulating themselves when they "foil" a "plot" their agent provocateurs have cooked up. https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-31-fake-isis-plots-and-the-selling-of-forever-war https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-31-fake-isis-plots-and... The NSA doesn't like to brag as much as the FBI does but they're clearly just as responsible for dropping the ball on domestic terrorism every other week when yet another mass shooting happens...
  - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
    I don't even know where to begin, there are just so many logical fallacies and complete misunderstandings in what you've said that the best I can recommend is for you to just not bother thinking about this stuff at all. It does no one any good.
    - scrumption 8y ago
      Nice argument.
      - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency Try having even the tiniest bit of an idea what you are talking about.
        dang 8y ago
        You crossed into incivility repeatedly in this flamewar, and here you cross into outright bannable offense. Could you please not do this when commenting here? If someone else is completely wrong, and you react like this, all you do is make them seem more credible, and discredit what you know. What would work much better is to wait until you can comment neutrally, and then comment neutrally with information we can all learn from. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - maybeiambatman 8y ago
      What a horrendously condescending reply. If you want to do any one any good, the least you can do is elaborate.
      - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
        What is the expectation here? The commenter has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. The arguments are being made are clearly without any understanding of how any intelligence agency operates, and absolute ignorance of the NSA's mandate, much less any actual data about its activities. It's like reading a post by someone bitching about the modern Hollywood blockbuster culture by citing Superman's plot arc in the new Avengers movie, except that somehow it isn't a trolling attempt. What sort of attention does that blatant misconception and willful ignorance deserve?
- wybiral 8y ago
  These people seem to think that the NSA is only collecting data to stop mass shootings and normal crimes. The concept of using this data to stamp out more systematic terrorism, espionage and other nation state attacks doesn't occur to them.
  - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
    Like, they are so ignorant that they don't even have the trivially basic information contained in the first paragraph of their wikipedia page. It's moronic.
  - jlgaddis 8y ago
    How does keeping tabs on every phone call my ~85-year-old grandmother makes help keep the country secure?
    - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
      They really aren't. 500 million sounds like a lot, but it is very unlikely any call by anyone in your family is caught in this net. As someone pointed out, with 250 million people owning phones in this country, as well as vast networks of systematic and/or automated calling, the portion of calls actually being tracked here is pretty tiny. It's also a situation where having useless data costs next to nothing (economically at least, philosophically is a different debate), but missing even a small detail could be critical.
      - jlgaddis 8y ago
        We knew five years ago that the NSA was receiving "billions of [call detail] records ... per day", just indiscriminately collecting every CDR they could -- from everyone (including my grandma and yours), not just criminals or "terrorists" or whomever the latest bogeyman is. I have no reason to believe that that has changed, that they have stopped collecting all of this data that is so easily available to them. With that in mind, I do not believe that "it is very unlikely any call" by anyone in my family was included in the catch. I believe it very likely that many calls by many people in my family was -- and continues to be -- included in their "net".
- rconti 8y ago
  We have not been made (substantially) safer. The trade was not worth it. A town near me recently installed ANPR license plate readers. Their justification was to catch criminals, particularly those engaging in property crimes which were going unsolved. Did ANPR help solve some property crimes? Almost certainly. Were property crimes up significantly prior to the installation of the ANPR readers? No. Are they down significantly after? No.
  - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
    >We have not been made (substantially) safer. How do you know that? >Were property crimes up significantly prior to the installation of the ANPR readers? No. Are they down significantly after? No. I get that this comparison sounds similar, but it really doesn't make any sense. The most powerful nations in the world are constantly trying to gain as much access to our secure systems, communications, and infrastructure. Even though these efforts are almost entirely hidden from every level of the public, we still have plenty of stories of things like Stuxnet or the Chinese obtaining classified engineering data. The NSA exists to combat this. They aren't fighting crime. They aren't fighting what is essentially an economically guaranteed statistical effect (property crime). They are an intelligence gathering and signal analysis agency tasked with thwarting foreign actors, which we know are actively pouring massive resources into activities hostile to us. That is why they exist, and that is why their successes (and failures) are almost entirely unknown to the general public.
    - schoen 8y ago
      Upvoted for making specific arguments rather than abusing people, like you did in some other parts of this thread.
      - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
        Because it seemed like a legitimate misunderstanding rather than a complete unwillingness to even glance at the NSAs mandate.
    - orcs 8y ago
ataturk 8y ago
You're not the only one. What hurts the most for me is that I wrote my doctoral thesis on privacy back in 2003 and I touched on a number of these issues. 9/11 ruined my career, though. After 9/11, nobody wanted privacy or to even talk about privacy. I knew all this was going to happen. David Brin knew all this was going to happen, and so did a lot of other writers and pundits. And here we sit now, wondering what to do now that we have empowered a monster that without much more work is going to get us all killed.
- ModernMech 8y ago
  > After 9/11, nobody wanted privacy or to even talk about privacy. Yup! And not only did the NSA turn into a monster, but so did the TSA (or more aptly, that monster was created), the biggest theatre troupe on the planet, because that's all it is. The most eye opening thing happened just recently to cement this in my mind. After the Superbowl parade in Philadelphia this year, I caught a ride from PHL to SFO. Basically everyone else in the world was leaving the same time as me, so there were lines stretched around the airport to get through security. The line for my terminal began in the parking structure. So you know what they did? Of course you do. They relaxed all the rules and let everyone through metal detectors. Shoes on. Belts on. Liquids? Bring em through. Laptops and tablets, leave them in your bags. That giant invasive scanning machine? What do we have that for anyway? Step on through the metal detector, I don't have time to grope you today. It was the most fun I've had in an airport since 2001. So let me get this straight. For years, I've been disrobing in public and subjecting myself to groping on the off-chance that someone might have a bomb tucked under their scrotum, yet on the BUSIEST DAY EVER it's okay to throw all those security protocols out the window.... why?? But no one questioned it then, in 2001 and the years thereafter, and no one is questioning it now. Oh, and for anyone who's wondering, after processing a record number of passengers for that airport with absolutely no security screening, a total of zero (0) airlines were taken down that day.
  - 21 8y ago
    > So let me get this straight. For years, I've been disrobing in public and subjecting myself to groping on the off-chance that someone might have a bomb tucked under their scrotum, yet on the BUSIEST DAY EVER it's okay to throw all those security protocols out the window.... why?? I get your point, but you are making a logical mistake here. If a building shuts down it's fire warning systems and blocks the fire exits for a week because of some construction work, that doesn't mean that they should just be removed because obviously they are not needed.
jMyles 8y ago
> Whom are they protecting? Cause it sure is not the average citizen. But was there ever any indication to the contrary? How did we as Americans convert to the myth that our government, let alone our "intelligence" agencies, have any inclination to protect us or advance our interests? That has never been their practice ever. Our government spent the better part of a century not only allowing 3.5 million of us to live in slavery, but actively facilitating and promoting it. Even after it finally put an end to this practice de jurie, it immediately allowed us to be enslaved as "prisoners", and today 2 million of us are in that situation. I don't mean to bring up such generic anarchism here, but I think it's sharply relevant when considering questions like, "why do the CIA and NSA behave the way they do?" They were created and charged to do it. It's their job. We can debate about how best to end that job, but I really don't think it's reasonable to suggest that they ever had some high-minded democratic purpose.
- mk89 8y ago
  If your comment is meant to be sarcastic, then I am failing to see it... Could you explain what you mean by enslaving as prisoner? So you would let a rapist free or what?
  - galazzah 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow
    - mk89 8y ago
      Oh, a novel. Never read that.
      - jMyles 8y ago
        Eh? Did you click the link? It's non-fiction.
        mk89 8y ago
21 8y ago
For a second I thought you were talking about Google. Food for thought.
- joering2 8y ago
  CIA founded Google, for one. An apple doesn't fall far from a tree. https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
  - praneshp 8y ago
    Isn't that a bit of a jump, and specifically called out in the quartz article as not true? "Did the CIA directly fund the work of Brin and Page, and therefore create Google? No."
    - nitrogen 8y ago
      You should probably quote the article title too: "Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance" The gist I got from skimming it is that the CIA didn't "directly" fund them because that's handled by a differwnt group acting in their interest.
      - praneshp 8y ago
        aka Google was _not_ founded by the CIA
mc32 8y ago
And not only agency vs civilians but apparently the agency vs politicians in all areas of govt.
lern_too_spel 8y ago
Automatically collecting everyone's cell phone data, has software automatically installed in Smart TV's everywhere, monitors your online footprint (emails, social media[of course]). According to all the documents published so far, the NSA does none of these except monitoring public social media posts.
- dabber 8y ago
  >According to all the documents published so far, the NSA does none of these except monitoring public social media posts. From the first paragraph of the article linked here: >The U.S. National Security Agency collected 534 million records of phone calls and text messages of Americans last year, more than triple gathered in 2016, a U.S. intelligence agency report released on Friday said.
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    That doesn't support any of GGP's statements now, does it? They merely collected the call times and numbers of a tiny fraction of the "billions" of calls placed per day in the US.
- bonestamp2 8y ago
  You're right, although anecdotally speaking... every time I've turned on my Samsung TV for the past 10 months, it lists the USB port as the most recently used source on my TV. It never did this before. That is extra strange since I've never used the USB port on my TV, and the TV has been installed rather high on a wall behind my desk since the day it arrived so it would be nearly impossible for my wife or small children to get at the USB port, let alone plug in a valid source... unless it was being used as an exploit by some software in the TV. I'm not suggesting that is what is happening, however, it is suspicious as hell.
aje403 8y ago
Thankfully, I’m not sure if this remains the case, I’ve read NSA salaries cap out around $150k for devs, so they might not have anybody competent enough to do anything with the data. I consider this a valid hypothesis
- sahil-kang 8y ago
  I don’t know if that salary cap is true, but these agencies have the option of hiring well-paid contractors from private firms.
  - twothamendment 8y ago
    There is always someone willing to do a job, but that is one where it doesn't matter how much they want to pay me. No thanks, I don't want to know what goes on if I can't talk about it.
    - aje403 8y ago
      There is, but if that person is doing the job and enough people say to them "hey I like your resume please let me double your salary" then the company isn't going to have great retention
aflagatopamoon 8y ago
You need a brutish thug in your tribe/gang/Pantheon which you can count on to do dirty jobs. That's why the connection between organized crime and intelligence agencies has always been solid. Too much oversight/rule-pushing muzzles the potential of these guard dogs to act or intimidate. If you don't have these thugs in your gang, then other gangs that include them can take advantage of you. They are protecting the interests of the Gang-leader. They are not there to help old ladies cross the WWW. They are there to wiretap entire countries to capture contract fraud before it can damage the US economy (which impacts the average citizen). They capture gang infiltrators before they can do too much damage to the defensive and offensive capabilities of the gang. They make infrastructure to annihilate the communication capabilities of other gangs, should this need arise. A gang without rule-skirting all-seeing thugs, Tricksters, and Peeping Toms will not stay on top.
- rhizome 8y ago
  Seeing the world in terms of who is "on top" is a big part of the problem.
  - stickdogg 8y ago
    That said. It is the way the world has always operated. Until one can separate themself from their ego, they will continue to be run by their ego.
    - rhizome 8y ago
      As a matter of fact, the world has not "always operated" on Freudian terms, and my understanding is that those terms are essentially the COBOL of psychology by now anyway.
- Chriky 8y ago
  > That's why the connection between organized crime and intelligence agencies has always been solid. What do you mean by this?
contourtrails 8y ago
>"What does the NSA so? Who are they protecting? You're comitting a logical fallacy. You think just because bad things sometimes do happen to US citizens that the NSA clearly isn't doing anything.... Clearly faulty logic. I'm glad the NSA exists because there are bad actors out there and we need informed law enforcement to protect us.
- jstanley 8y ago
  You're committing exactly the same logical fallacy. You think just because it sometimes helps against bad actors that the NSA is a net force for good.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
> And yet tons of bad things keep happening to regular citizens in the US. The "War on Terror!"[0] is yet another way to funnel money to rich corporations. It is a money making machine and that's really all it is. More people die from choking in the U.S. each year than died from terrorism in at least the past 5 years. And yet, we've spent 100's of billions. The NSA is just a piece of that machine. [0] I know you were being more general in your comment, I'm just pointing out a single reason.
moat 8y ago
I don’t like the data collection either, but it’s impossible to know the untold disasters that it may or may not have prevented. “Assume that a legislator with courage, influence, intellect, vision, and perseverance manages to enact a law that goes into universal effect and employment on September 10, 2001; it imposes the continuously locked bulletproof doors in every cockpit (at high costs to the struggling airlines)-just in case terrorists decide to use planes to attack the World Trade Center in New York City. I know this is lunacy, but it is just a thought experiment... The legislation is not a popular measure among the airline personnel, as it complicates their lives. But it would certainly have prevented 9/11. The person who imposed locks on cockpit doors gets no statues in public squares, not so much as a quick mention of his contribution in his obituary. "Joe Smith, who helped avoid the disaster of 9/11, died of complications of liver disease." Seeing how superfluous his measure was, and how it squandered resources, the public, with great help from airline pilots, might well boot him out of office.” -Quote from Taleb
- joering2 8y ago
  > I don’t like the data collection either, but it’s impossible to know the untold disasters that it may or may not have prevented. This is probably the most irresponsible and reckless statement a citizen of free of oppresion country can say. Follow me here; taking your reasoning further here is my honest statement: i can bet my chopped off head that if we would have installed cameras and microphones in every single room in every single american househould, we would have avoid “intold disasters” that i can guarantee you, including but not limited to: burglaries, kidnappings, abductions, ilegal arms/drugs dealings, prostitutions, child trafficking and domestic abuse. At least! I really guarantee you that! Push the switch and count saved lives in tens of thausands! I would rather live without my head than in such military orwellian state! Those who want temporary safety by giving away freedom.. so did one smart man said.
- wu-ikkyu 8y ago
  >it’s impossible to know the untold disasters that it may or may not have prevented. We do know, however, the type of disasters that mass data collection has created in the past. IBM's mass data processing technology was crucial to the operational efficiency of the Holocaust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
chocolatebunny 8y ago
Your message sounds kind of ominous but I'd like to point out hanlon's razor. The NSA sounds like another public sector organization that just tries to spend us much money as it can to justify itself getting so much money. The problem is when people with access to that information try to use it for their own personal gain, or when they use this information against anyone who speaks out against the NSA's ridiculous budget because they think that anyone who speaks out against the NSA obviously is a threat to National Security. Both those things might have happened already.
- chrischen 8y ago
  I think it’s much simpler. They’re just trying to do their job and make it easier. A bigger budget is the means.
  - e12e 8y ago
    You might want to review William Binney's Hope9 talk: https://archive.org/details/Hope9KeynoteByWilliamBinney https://archive.org/details/Hope9KeynoteByWilliamBinney Or: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FOFtQ6n3WR4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FOFtQ6n3WR4
mirimir 8y ago
> What exactly does the NSA do? It's a military signals-intelligence organization. > Whom are they protecting? It's hardly monolithic. Imagine Catch 22 on steroids. Likely each power center is primarily protecting itself, and its funding. Overall, they're protecting the military-industrial complex. The 1%. The powers that be. Edit: Whoever pays the bills.
- stickdogg 8y ago
  Good breakdown.
blitmap 8y ago
I sincerely doubt the argument that dragnet surveillance has no effect. I wish as soon as the information could be de-classified the NSA would publish about attacks it stopped. Doing so can expose sources and methods used to collect the information, so not everything would become known - but it would certainly help to benefit the agency and its credibility in the eyes of the governed. That said, I don't want to live in a country that looks over my shoulder as I grow and mature my reasoning about the world. We need the ability to formulate our own opinions without feeling watched (because this leads to self-censorship!). Discourse is necessary for society to evolve. We wouldn't have things like interracial marriage without people taking unpopular ideas to market. I just wish we could see the full benefits of both sides in this argument.
- pfortuny 8y ago
  Looking at the benefits is the wrong way to solve a problem because it prioritizes the wrong thing: ends become an excuse for bad means.
  - blitmap 8y ago
    I do agree that the negatives of dragnet surveillance disproportionately harms society - much greater than the net-positives. I just don't feel like we have enough transparency to correctly scale that bar graph.
    - stickdogg 8y ago
      How much more transparency do you desire? Personally I don't need any chart or measuring stick to show me what's dangerous.
      - blitmap 8y ago
        I fully believe dragnet surveillance is dangerous. My point is, I can't just say "Dragnet surveillance is dangerous." A well-formed argument has citations and metrics and something to show relative scale. The people pushing for dragnet surveillance (those people in positions of authority) feel like they're keeping us safe and doing what needs to be done - and that we just don't understand. We need to KNOW exactly how much surveillance harms us - we cannot argue with blanket statements.

BigChiefSmokem 8y ago

It was created to work on code-breaking during World War II and then formalized by Harry Truman as an official agency. It was made to serve the military and in turn the American people but over time their mission has been perverted for the sake of security theater.

BookmarkSaver 8y ago

>And yet tons of bad things keep happening to regular citizens in the US. Like what? I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here. >What exactly does the NSA do? Whom are they protecting? Cause it sure is not the average citizen. ??? Sounds like you know absolutely nothing about espionage. Maybe you are right, but intelligence agencies don't talk about their activities, even their successes, for very good reason.

ianai 8y ago
Yes and I imagine even having records on everyone wouldn’t be enough to catch all cases. Some of the recent offenders really seemed to only identify as problems during the act. No chance to stop them.
scrumption 8y ago
>Like what? I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here. Uh, the constant mass shootings that have occurred over the past year wherein, 100% of the time, the perp was already known to police and FBI and had a very public troubling online presence detailing their years of mental instability and virulent racism? >intelligence agencies don't talk about their activities, even their successes, for very good reason. The hell are you talking about? The FBI is constantly publicly congratulating themselves when they "foil" a "plot" their agent provocateurs have cooked up. https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-31-fake-isis-plots-and-the-selling-of-forever-war https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-31-fake-isis-plots-and... The NSA doesn't like to brag as much as the FBI does but they're clearly just as responsible for dropping the ball on domestic terrorism every other week when yet another mass shooting happens...
- BookmarkSaver 8y ago
  I don't even know where to begin, there are just so many logical fallacies and complete misunderstandings in what you've said that the best I can recommend is for you to just not bother thinking about this stuff at all. It does no one any good.
  - scrumption 8y ago
    Nice argument.
    - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency Try having even the tiniest bit of an idea what you are talking about.
      - dang 8y ago
        You crossed into incivility repeatedly in this flamewar, and here you cross into outright bannable offense. Could you please not do this when commenting here? If someone else is completely wrong, and you react like this, all you do is make them seem more credible, and discredit what you know. What would work much better is to wait until you can comment neutrally, and then comment neutrally with information we can all learn from. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - maybeiambatman 8y ago
    What a horrendously condescending reply. If you want to do any one any good, the least you can do is elaborate.
    - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
      What is the expectation here? The commenter has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. The arguments are being made are clearly without any understanding of how any intelligence agency operates, and absolute ignorance of the NSA's mandate, much less any actual data about its activities. It's like reading a post by someone bitching about the modern Hollywood blockbuster culture by citing Superman's plot arc in the new Avengers movie, except that somehow it isn't a trolling attempt. What sort of attention does that blatant misconception and willful ignorance deserve?
wybiral 8y ago
These people seem to think that the NSA is only collecting data to stop mass shootings and normal crimes. The concept of using this data to stamp out more systematic terrorism, espionage and other nation state attacks doesn't occur to them.
- BookmarkSaver 8y ago
  Like, they are so ignorant that they don't even have the trivially basic information contained in the first paragraph of their wikipedia page. It's moronic.
- jlgaddis 8y ago
  How does keeping tabs on every phone call my ~85-year-old grandmother makes help keep the country secure?
  - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
    They really aren't. 500 million sounds like a lot, but it is very unlikely any call by anyone in your family is caught in this net. As someone pointed out, with 250 million people owning phones in this country, as well as vast networks of systematic and/or automated calling, the portion of calls actually being tracked here is pretty tiny. It's also a situation where having useless data costs next to nothing (economically at least, philosophically is a different debate), but missing even a small detail could be critical.
    - jlgaddis 8y ago
      We knew five years ago that the NSA was receiving "billions of [call detail] records ... per day", just indiscriminately collecting every CDR they could -- from everyone (including my grandma and yours), not just criminals or "terrorists" or whomever the latest bogeyman is. I have no reason to believe that that has changed, that they have stopped collecting all of this data that is so easily available to them. With that in mind, I do not believe that "it is very unlikely any call" by anyone in my family was included in the catch. I believe it very likely that many calls by many people in my family was -- and continues to be -- included in their "net".
rconti 8y ago
We have not been made (substantially) safer. The trade was not worth it. A town near me recently installed ANPR license plate readers. Their justification was to catch criminals, particularly those engaging in property crimes which were going unsolved. Did ANPR help solve some property crimes? Almost certainly. Were property crimes up significantly prior to the installation of the ANPR readers? No. Are they down significantly after? No.
- BookmarkSaver 8y ago
  >We have not been made (substantially) safer. How do you know that? >Were property crimes up significantly prior to the installation of the ANPR readers? No. Are they down significantly after? No. I get that this comparison sounds similar, but it really doesn't make any sense. The most powerful nations in the world are constantly trying to gain as much access to our secure systems, communications, and infrastructure. Even though these efforts are almost entirely hidden from every level of the public, we still have plenty of stories of things like Stuxnet or the Chinese obtaining classified engineering data. The NSA exists to combat this. They aren't fighting crime. They aren't fighting what is essentially an economically guaranteed statistical effect (property crime). They are an intelligence gathering and signal analysis agency tasked with thwarting foreign actors, which we know are actively pouring massive resources into activities hostile to us. That is why they exist, and that is why their successes (and failures) are almost entirely unknown to the general public.
  - schoen 8y ago
    Upvoted for making specific arguments rather than abusing people, like you did in some other parts of this thread.
    - BookmarkSaver 8y ago
      Because it seemed like a legitimate misunderstanding rather than a complete unwillingness to even glance at the NSAs mandate.
  - orcs 8y ago

ataturk 8y ago

You're not the only one. What hurts the most for me is that I wrote my doctoral thesis on privacy back in 2003 and I touched on a number of these issues. 9/11 ruined my career, though. After 9/11, nobody wanted privacy or to even talk about privacy. I knew all this was going to happen. David Brin knew all this was going to happen, and so did a lot of other writers and pundits. And here we sit now, wondering what to do now that we have empowered a monster that without much more work is going to get us all killed.

ModernMech 8y ago
> After 9/11, nobody wanted privacy or to even talk about privacy. Yup! And not only did the NSA turn into a monster, but so did the TSA (or more aptly, that monster was created), the biggest theatre troupe on the planet, because that's all it is. The most eye opening thing happened just recently to cement this in my mind. After the Superbowl parade in Philadelphia this year, I caught a ride from PHL to SFO. Basically everyone else in the world was leaving the same time as me, so there were lines stretched around the airport to get through security. The line for my terminal began in the parking structure. So you know what they did? Of course you do. They relaxed all the rules and let everyone through metal detectors. Shoes on. Belts on. Liquids? Bring em through. Laptops and tablets, leave them in your bags. That giant invasive scanning machine? What do we have that for anyway? Step on through the metal detector, I don't have time to grope you today. It was the most fun I've had in an airport since 2001. So let me get this straight. For years, I've been disrobing in public and subjecting myself to groping on the off-chance that someone might have a bomb tucked under their scrotum, yet on the BUSIEST DAY EVER it's okay to throw all those security protocols out the window.... why?? But no one questioned it then, in 2001 and the years thereafter, and no one is questioning it now. Oh, and for anyone who's wondering, after processing a record number of passengers for that airport with absolutely no security screening, a total of zero (0) airlines were taken down that day.
- 21 8y ago
  > So let me get this straight. For years, I've been disrobing in public and subjecting myself to groping on the off-chance that someone might have a bomb tucked under their scrotum, yet on the BUSIEST DAY EVER it's okay to throw all those security protocols out the window.... why?? I get your point, but you are making a logical mistake here. If a building shuts down it's fire warning systems and blocks the fire exits for a week because of some construction work, that doesn't mean that they should just be removed because obviously they are not needed.

jMyles 8y ago

> Whom are they protecting? Cause it sure is not the average citizen. But was there ever any indication to the contrary? How did we as Americans convert to the myth that our government, let alone our "intelligence" agencies, have any inclination to protect us or advance our interests? That has never been their practice ever. Our government spent the better part of a century not only allowing 3.5 million of us to live in slavery, but actively facilitating and promoting it. Even after it finally put an end to this practice de jurie, it immediately allowed us to be enslaved as "prisoners", and today 2 million of us are in that situation. I don't mean to bring up such generic anarchism here, but I think it's sharply relevant when considering questions like, "why do the CIA and NSA behave the way they do?" They were created and charged to do it. It's their job. We can debate about how best to end that job, but I really don't think it's reasonable to suggest that they ever had some high-minded democratic purpose.

mk89 8y ago
If your comment is meant to be sarcastic, then I am failing to see it... Could you explain what you mean by enslaving as prisoner? So you would let a rapist free or what?
- galazzah 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow
  - mk89 8y ago
    Oh, a novel. Never read that.
    - jMyles 8y ago
      Eh? Did you click the link? It's non-fiction.
      - mk89 8y ago

21 8y ago

For a second I thought you were talking about Google. Food for thought.

joering2 8y ago
CIA founded Google, for one. An apple doesn't fall far from a tree. https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
- praneshp 8y ago
  Isn't that a bit of a jump, and specifically called out in the quartz article as not true? "Did the CIA directly fund the work of Brin and Page, and therefore create Google? No."
  - nitrogen 8y ago
    You should probably quote the article title too: "Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance" The gist I got from skimming it is that the CIA didn't "directly" fund them because that's handled by a differwnt group acting in their interest.
    - praneshp 8y ago
      aka Google was _not_ founded by the CIA

mc32 8y ago

And not only agency vs civilians but apparently the agency vs politicians in all areas of govt.

lern_too_spel 8y ago

dabber 8y ago
>According to all the documents published so far, the NSA does none of these except monitoring public social media posts. From the first paragraph of the article linked here: >The U.S. National Security Agency collected 534 million records of phone calls and text messages of Americans last year, more than triple gathered in 2016, a U.S. intelligence agency report released on Friday said.
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  That doesn't support any of GGP's statements now, does it? They merely collected the call times and numbers of a tiny fraction of the "billions" of calls placed per day in the US.
bonestamp2 8y ago
You're right, although anecdotally speaking... every time I've turned on my Samsung TV for the past 10 months, it lists the USB port as the most recently used source on my TV. It never did this before. That is extra strange since I've never used the USB port on my TV, and the TV has been installed rather high on a wall behind my desk since the day it arrived so it would be nearly impossible for my wife or small children to get at the USB port, let alone plug in a valid source... unless it was being used as an exploit by some software in the TV. I'm not suggesting that is what is happening, however, it is suspicious as hell.

aje403 8y ago

Thankfully, I’m not sure if this remains the case, I’ve read NSA salaries cap out around $150k for devs, so they might not have anybody competent enough to do anything with the data. I consider this a valid hypothesis

sahil-kang 8y ago
I don’t know if that salary cap is true, but these agencies have the option of hiring well-paid contractors from private firms.
- twothamendment 8y ago
  There is always someone willing to do a job, but that is one where it doesn't matter how much they want to pay me. No thanks, I don't want to know what goes on if I can't talk about it.
  - aje403 8y ago
    There is, but if that person is doing the job and enough people say to them "hey I like your resume please let me double your salary" then the company isn't going to have great retention

aflagatopamoon 8y ago

You need a brutish thug in your tribe/gang/Pantheon which you can count on to do dirty jobs. That's why the connection between organized crime and intelligence agencies has always been solid. Too much oversight/rule-pushing muzzles the potential of these guard dogs to act or intimidate. If you don't have these thugs in your gang, then other gangs that include them can take advantage of you. They are protecting the interests of the Gang-leader. They are not there to help old ladies cross the WWW. They are there to wiretap entire countries to capture contract fraud before it can damage the US economy (which impacts the average citizen). They capture gang infiltrators before they can do too much damage to the defensive and offensive capabilities of the gang. They make infrastructure to annihilate the communication capabilities of other gangs, should this need arise. A gang without rule-skirting all-seeing thugs, Tricksters, and Peeping Toms will not stay on top.

rhizome 8y ago
Seeing the world in terms of who is "on top" is a big part of the problem.
- stickdogg 8y ago
  That said. It is the way the world has always operated. Until one can separate themself from their ego, they will continue to be run by their ego.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    As a matter of fact, the world has not "always operated" on Freudian terms, and my understanding is that those terms are essentially the COBOL of psychology by now anyway.
Chriky 8y ago
> That's why the connection between organized crime and intelligence agencies has always been solid. What do you mean by this?

contourtrails 8y ago

>"What does the NSA so? Who are they protecting? You're comitting a logical fallacy. You think just because bad things sometimes do happen to US citizens that the NSA clearly isn't doing anything.... Clearly faulty logic. I'm glad the NSA exists because there are bad actors out there and we need informed law enforcement to protect us.

jstanley 8y ago
You're committing exactly the same logical fallacy. You think just because it sometimes helps against bad actors that the NSA is a net force for good.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

> And yet tons of bad things keep happening to regular citizens in the US. The "War on Terror!"[0] is yet another way to funnel money to rich corporations. It is a money making machine and that's really all it is. More people die from choking in the U.S. each year than died from terrorism in at least the past 5 years. And yet, we've spent 100's of billions. The NSA is just a piece of that machine. [0] I know you were being more general in your comment, I'm just pointing out a single reason.

moat 8y ago

I don’t like the data collection either, but it’s impossible to know the untold disasters that it may or may not have prevented. “Assume that a legislator with courage, influence, intellect, vision, and perseverance manages to enact a law that goes into universal effect and employment on September 10, 2001; it imposes the continuously locked bulletproof doors in every cockpit (at high costs to the struggling airlines)-just in case terrorists decide to use planes to attack the World Trade Center in New York City. I know this is lunacy, but it is just a thought experiment... The legislation is not a popular measure among the airline personnel, as it complicates their lives. But it would certainly have prevented 9/11. The person who imposed locks on cockpit doors gets no statues in public squares, not so much as a quick mention of his contribution in his obituary. "Joe Smith, who helped avoid the disaster of 9/11, died of complications of liver disease." Seeing how superfluous his measure was, and how it squandered resources, the public, with great help from airline pilots, might well boot him out of office.” -Quote from Taleb

joering2 8y ago
> I don’t like the data collection either, but it’s impossible to know the untold disasters that it may or may not have prevented. This is probably the most irresponsible and reckless statement a citizen of free of oppresion country can say. Follow me here; taking your reasoning further here is my honest statement: i can bet my chopped off head that if we would have installed cameras and microphones in every single room in every single american househould, we would have avoid “intold disasters” that i can guarantee you, including but not limited to: burglaries, kidnappings, abductions, ilegal arms/drugs dealings, prostitutions, child trafficking and domestic abuse. At least! I really guarantee you that! Push the switch and count saved lives in tens of thausands! I would rather live without my head than in such military orwellian state! Those who want temporary safety by giving away freedom.. so did one smart man said.
wu-ikkyu 8y ago
>it’s impossible to know the untold disasters that it may or may not have prevented. We do know, however, the type of disasters that mass data collection has created in the past. IBM's mass data processing technology was crucial to the operational efficiency of the Holocaust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

chocolatebunny 8y ago

Your message sounds kind of ominous but I'd like to point out hanlon's razor. The NSA sounds like another public sector organization that just tries to spend us much money as it can to justify itself getting so much money. The problem is when people with access to that information try to use it for their own personal gain, or when they use this information against anyone who speaks out against the NSA's ridiculous budget because they think that anyone who speaks out against the NSA obviously is a threat to National Security. Both those things might have happened already.

chrischen 8y ago
I think it’s much simpler. They’re just trying to do their job and make it easier. A bigger budget is the means.
- e12e 8y ago
  You might want to review William Binney's Hope9 talk: https://archive.org/details/Hope9KeynoteByWilliamBinney https://archive.org/details/Hope9KeynoteByWilliamBinney Or: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FOFtQ6n3WR4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FOFtQ6n3WR4

mirimir 8y ago

> What exactly does the NSA do? It's a military signals-intelligence organization. > Whom are they protecting? It's hardly monolithic. Imagine Catch 22 on steroids. Likely each power center is primarily protecting itself, and its funding. Overall, they're protecting the military-industrial complex. The 1%. The powers that be. Edit: Whoever pays the bills.

stickdogg 8y ago
Good breakdown.

blitmap 8y ago

I sincerely doubt the argument that dragnet surveillance has no effect. I wish as soon as the information could be de-classified the NSA would publish about attacks it stopped. Doing so can expose sources and methods used to collect the information, so not everything would become known - but it would certainly help to benefit the agency and its credibility in the eyes of the governed. That said, I don't want to live in a country that looks over my shoulder as I grow and mature my reasoning about the world. We need the ability to formulate our own opinions without feeling watched (because this leads to self-censorship!). Discourse is necessary for society to evolve. We wouldn't have things like interracial marriage without people taking unpopular ideas to market. I just wish we could see the full benefits of both sides in this argument.

pfortuny 8y ago
Looking at the benefits is the wrong way to solve a problem because it prioritizes the wrong thing: ends become an excuse for bad means.
- blitmap 8y ago
  I do agree that the negatives of dragnet surveillance disproportionately harms society - much greater than the net-positives. I just don't feel like we have enough transparency to correctly scale that bar graph.
  - stickdogg 8y ago
    How much more transparency do you desire? Personally I don't need any chart or measuring stick to show me what's dangerous.
    - blitmap 8y ago
      I fully believe dragnet surveillance is dangerous. My point is, I can't just say "Dragnet surveillance is dangerous." A well-formed argument has citations and metrics and something to show relative scale. The people pushing for dragnet surveillance (those people in positions of authority) feel like they're keeping us safe and doing what needs to be done - and that we just don't understand. We need to KNOW exactly how much surveillance harms us - we cannot argue with blanket statements.