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Why would they? A national security organization should be concerned with keeping their citizen’s traffic from being snooped - not snooping their citizen’s traf

Why would they? A national security organization should be concerned with keeping their citizen’s traffic from being snooped - not snooping their citizen’s traffic.

risotto_groupon 9y ago
If the glass is half full of citizen traffic and half full of non-citizen traffic and the NSA drinks ALL of it and I don't think they should be drinking ANY of it does that make me an optimist or a pessimist?
- gnode 9y ago
  It makes you a cynic, but rightly so.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Considering the nature of comms that happen on line these days, it might make you a septic.
- stevew20 9y ago
  Optimized pessimist. You are part of the majority!
notheguyouthink 9y ago
Eh, I mean, it's complicated - isn't it? If anyone inside US borders is off limits, wouldn't it be a great place for terrorists to set up shop? Completely no surveillance in US borders, win win! I agree completely that our rights shouldn't be trampled on by governing agencies. Yet, I don't know how they're going to work in the old fashioned way. Perhaps it's not required, but I can't blame them for seeking that option, even if well meaning. (By old fashioned, I mean back in the days of easily monitoring everyones phones and calling it good enough. Things are becoming increasingly difficult to monitor for a even a well meaning government) edit: Not sure why I'm being downvotes, so let me elaborate. We all know it's stupidly common for the government to monitor it's civilians. Those days are being altered heavily due to cryptography. In some ways it still be easier to track people, in other ways it will be harder. Is this news to any of you? I don't get the push back lol.
- jstanley 9y ago
  There were never days of "easily monitoring everyone's phones". If they wanted to monitor somebody's phone they had to go to great effort to do so. It's easier today than it has ever been for surveillance services to monitor large amounts of people. Not just because they have the access and computational ability to automatically search the content of messages, but also because more of our communications are long-distance or otherwise digitised than ever before.
  - notheguyouthink 9y ago
    > There were never days of "easily monitoring everyone's phones". If they wanted to monitor somebody's phone they had to go to great effort to do so. Oh, I thought it was far easier to tap a phone than to break modern cryptography. Why was it not? > It's easier today than it has ever been for surveillance services to monitor large amounts of people. Not just because they have the access and computational ability to automatically search the content of messages, but also because more of our communications are long-distance or otherwise digitised than ever before. I would argue that this is changing though, hence the entire point of this Post. In the 90s no one encrypted anything, even https was laughable. More and more things are being encrypted. That's what this post is effectively about, no? The government is trying to stay ahead of the ball on cryptography and hoping to keep their ability to monitor everyone. Do you somehow disagree? I'm confused.
- stordoff 9y ago
  Could you elaborate on what you mean by "easily monitoring everyones phones"? Physically tapping the phones is easy, but doing anything meaningful with that amount of audio is anything but.
  - notheguyouthink 9y ago
    I suppose I should have said "anyones" vs "everyones", but that's an implementation issue isn't it? The problem I was talking about was proper encryption being impossible to monitor. Meaning that a well meaning actor (which I don't believe exists, but ignoring that) finds their job more difficult.
ENOTTY 9y ago
Please look past the name of the Agency to understand its mission. If you think the security of US citizens' communications should be a mission of the NSA, go advocate with your representatives to make it so. As it currently stands, the IA mission of the NSA is solely to secure National Security Systems, which are systems that handle classified information or are critical to military or intelligence activities. "National Security Directive (NSD) 42 authorizes NSA to secure National Security Systems, which includes systems that handle classified information or are otherwise critical to military or intelligence activities." https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/information-assurance/ https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/information-assurance/

Why would they? A national security organization should be concerned with keeping their citizen’s traffic from being snooped - not snooping their citizen’s traffic.

risotto_groupon 9y ago

If the glass is half full of citizen traffic and half full of non-citizen traffic and the NSA drinks ALL of it and I don't think they should be drinking ANY of it does that make me an optimist or a pessimist?

gnode 9y ago
It makes you a cynic, but rightly so.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Considering the nature of comms that happen on line these days, it might make you a septic.
stevew20 9y ago
Optimized pessimist. You are part of the majority!

notheguyouthink 9y ago

Eh, I mean, it's complicated - isn't it? If anyone inside US borders is off limits, wouldn't it be a great place for terrorists to set up shop? Completely no surveillance in US borders, win win! I agree completely that our rights shouldn't be trampled on by governing agencies. Yet, I don't know how they're going to work in the old fashioned way. Perhaps it's not required, but I can't blame them for seeking that option, even if well meaning. (By old fashioned, I mean back in the days of easily monitoring everyones phones and calling it good enough. Things are becoming increasingly difficult to monitor for a even a well meaning government) edit: Not sure why I'm being downvotes, so let me elaborate. We all know it's stupidly common for the government to monitor it's civilians. Those days are being altered heavily due to cryptography. In some ways it still be easier to track people, in other ways it will be harder. Is this news to any of you? I don't get the push back lol.

jstanley 9y ago
There were never days of "easily monitoring everyone's phones". If they wanted to monitor somebody's phone they had to go to great effort to do so. It's easier today than it has ever been for surveillance services to monitor large amounts of people. Not just because they have the access and computational ability to automatically search the content of messages, but also because more of our communications are long-distance or otherwise digitised than ever before.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  > There were never days of "easily monitoring everyone's phones". If they wanted to monitor somebody's phone they had to go to great effort to do so. Oh, I thought it was far easier to tap a phone than to break modern cryptography. Why was it not? > It's easier today than it has ever been for surveillance services to monitor large amounts of people. Not just because they have the access and computational ability to automatically search the content of messages, but also because more of our communications are long-distance or otherwise digitised than ever before. I would argue that this is changing though, hence the entire point of this Post. In the 90s no one encrypted anything, even https was laughable. More and more things are being encrypted. That's what this post is effectively about, no? The government is trying to stay ahead of the ball on cryptography and hoping to keep their ability to monitor everyone. Do you somehow disagree? I'm confused.
stordoff 9y ago
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "easily monitoring everyones phones"? Physically tapping the phones is easy, but doing anything meaningful with that amount of audio is anything but.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  I suppose I should have said "anyones" vs "everyones", but that's an implementation issue isn't it? The problem I was talking about was proper encryption being impossible to monitor. Meaning that a well meaning actor (which I don't believe exists, but ignoring that) finds their job more difficult.

ENOTTY 9y ago

Please look past the name of the Agency to understand its mission. If you think the security of US citizens' communications should be a mission of the NSA, go advocate with your representatives to make it so. As it currently stands, the IA mission of the NSA is solely to secure National Security Systems, which are systems that handle classified information or are critical to military or intelligence activities. "National Security Directive (NSD) 42 authorizes NSA to secure National Security Systems, which includes systems that handle classified information or are otherwise critical to military or intelligence activities." https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/information-assurance/ https://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/information-assurance/